WASHINGTON — Even as the House on Wednesday debated a bill aimed at helping to ease a baby formula crisis that has sent families scrambling, lawmakers are grappling with a second issue: how to ease the shortage’s impact on low-income families that use the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC.
While the bill would spend $28 million to fund the Food and Drug Administration’s infant formula safety and inspection capabilities, lawmakers aim to prevent low-income families from ever experiencing formula shortages again. Democrats want to extend WIC infant formula flexibilities that the Biden administration was only able to trigger recently because of the ongoing COVID-19 public health emergency.
The debate comes as President Joe Biden on Wednesday invoked the 1950 Defense Production Act to require suppliers to prioritize and provide the needed resources to formula manufacturers to increase production. Biden also directed the Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture to use military commercial aircraft to pick up overseas infant formula to get it to store shelves faster.
