For the last week, rumors and reports have been swirling about how Congress may finally be nearing a deal that would result in appropriating some much-needed additional funds to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, so that the organization won’t have to turn away potential program participants due to increased need and a lack of resources in 2024.
Though, as first reported by Politico, Congressional Republicans want that money to come with a pretty big catch. In exchange for funding WIC, they want to to add two major provisions to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): One would create a pilot program to catalog and restrict what SNAP participants can purchase with their benefits, while the other “would collect SNAP purchasing data with the goal of eventually restricting SNAP purchases.”
