Editorial: Bush’s skewed priorities

Thursday, Nov. 29, 2007 | 7:04 a.m.

A new report says thousands of low-income mothers and children could be cut from a federal program that helps them obtain nutritious food because the Bush administration's 2008 budget does not adequately cover rising food costs or the increasing number of people in the program.

Bush has proposed spending $5.4 billion next year for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which provides vouchers for foods such as cheese, milk and peanut butter to pregnant women, new mothers and children younger than 5. Bush's amount represents a $182 million increase and would cover about 8.3 million people.

But a report released this week by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal poverty research group, says food costs have risen and that more than 8.5 million people are projected to be enrolled in WIC next year.

The WIC money is included in the $933 billion that Bush budgeted for programs such as WIC, which are renewed annually. Congressional Democrats want to increase the amount for such programs by $22 billion, which includes $217 million more for WIC than Bush proposed. Bush, however, has refused to spend more on the annual programs, USA Today reported Tuesday.

The result, the center's report says, is that Bush's budget proposal falls short of funding all recipients. A spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department, which runs WIC, told USA Today that if the 2008 funding falls short, the department could seek a supplemental appropriation and that recipients might be eligible for help under other programs.

Even Bush's own Agriculture Department officials are acknowledging that WIC likely will run short next year, but the president won't budge. Bush has no trouble, however, spending $600 billion on the Iraq war - an effort, it seems, that is to be partly funded by cutting services to hungry women and children.