The Republican’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” (BBB) is big, and it sure is beautiful, ifyou’re in the upper 1% income group and you don’t give a hoot about what happens to those less fortunate.
Because Wednesday marked the start of the 2026 fiscal year, the WIC program — which provides free, healthy food to low-income pregnant women, new moms and children under 5— was due for an influx of funding.
YUM! This Big Beautiful Brunch is delicious. Too bad there isn’t enough to feed the kids.
Instead came the government shutdown.
If it persists, access to the federal program, known in full as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, could be jeopardized. A USDA letter to WIC state agency directors on Wednesday confirmed that states would not receive their next quarterly allocation of funds during the shutdown.
According to the National WIC Association, a nonprofit advocacy organization that represents state and local WIC agencies, “devastating disruptions” may deny millions of moms and children access to nutritious foods if the government remains closed for longer than a week or two.
WIC — a program within the U.S. Department of Agriculture — serves roughly 6.8 million people. It receives funding from Congress, which the USDA then allocates to stateson a quarterly basis.
From there, states distribute it to WIC clinics, of which there are roughly 10,000 nationwide. The clinics distribute preloaded cards that members use to purchase program-approved healthy foods at participating grocery stores. New moms can also purchase infant formula and receive lactation counseling.
Barbie Anderson, a mother of three who is pregnant, said she has relied on WIC to purchase healthy food since her oldest child was born nine years ago. Her family lives paycheck to paycheck in Milaca, Minnesota, she added, and the program helps them afford fruits, vegetables, eggs, milk, peanut butter and yogurt. She has also used it for breastfeeding support, she said.
Under normal circumstances, Anderson said, her WIC card would be reloaded on Oct. 15. She’s unsure if that will happen now.
“All the food that we get from WIC goes to our kids. So you’re really harming the kids” if services pause, she said.
During the shutdown, states will have to rely on up to $150 million in contingency funds from the USDA to continue offering services, along with a small amount of rollover funding from the previous fiscal year in some cases, according to the National WIC Association.
The group warned that the funding could dry up in a week or two if the shutdown persists, depending on how states allocate it.
A USDA spokesperson told NBC News that WIC’s continued operation will depend on “state choice and the length of a shutdown.”
It will be interesting to see which states choose to keep funding and which states choose to end funding.
And while you ponder that one, here’s the phony political statement from the federal agency, USDA:
“If Democrats do not fund the government, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) will run out of funding and States will have to make a choice,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement.
Get it? The Republicans and their “Big Beautiful Bill” rushed to feed the rich, but decided not to feed the poor, so now it has fallen on the Democrats to “fund the government.”
However, some House Democrats say the federal government has the power to keep WIC afloat — if the USDA commits to replenishing state funds used during the shutdown after it ends. In a letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Reps. Bobby Scott, D-Va., and Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., called on the USDA to do that.
The Democrats offer a solution that apparently the Republicans didn’t consider or didn’t want. We’ll see if the Republican-dominated Congress goes for it, or prefers to keep blaming the Dems for the BBB’s shortcomings.
The ability of WIC clinics to keep functioning will likely vary by state. Brandon Meline, director of maternal and child health at the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District, said he was told that Illinois(a blue state) clinics have sufficient money to last through the month.
The federal government has sufficient funds to support those in need and can never run short of dollars.
Additional federal taxes are not necessary to fund programs like WIC (Women, Infants, and Children).
If Congress and the President chose to do so, they could finance all their initiatives without imposing any taxes or accumulating what is often referred to as “debt.”
Simply by voting, the funds would become instantly available.
Your Representatives and Senators will now enter their extreme bullshit stage, where each party blames the other for a useless, harmful program they both have created and supported in the past.
Today, the only honest person in Washington regarding the debt limit, ironically, is America’s biggest liar, Donald Trump. He wants to get rid of it.
But he isn’t pushing that idea too hard, lest his MAGA zombies actually do it.
I’ve been traveling lately. Just returned from Put-in-Bay Island and Cleveland (Cleveland???) and found that in the interim, nothing changed.
MAGAs still ignorantly agree with a dangerous, stupid, amoral, Hitlerian leader, along with his dangerous. stupid, amoral Nazi appointees.
To demonstrate their fealty, MAGAs still spend their precious dollars on worthless air sold by dear leader, while decrying federal dollars for the poor. The GOP still favors free speech, so long as the dear leader approves.
SCOTUS and Congress still are hopelessly corrupt. The economy remains the “greatest of all time” as it begins its swirl down the stagflation toilet.
The hero of the day is a dead bigot. America still is hated, only more so, and fewer people wish to live here. Goodbye to the “shining city upon a hill” myth.
The only “real” Americans still are straight, white, male CINOs (Christians in Name Only), who demonstrate their faith in Jesus by doing exactly the opposite of everything Jesus preached, not the least of which is continuing to express hatred of Jesus’s own religion.
Thousands of our most honest, hardest-working, tax-paying, valuable consumers are being deported by Nazi masked brownshirts in favor of useless, rich slugs who can afford to buy their way into the country for the purpose of plunder.
People still “wonder” whether dear leader, who has been convicted of, and admitted to, attacking dozens of women, miraculously found the moral and legal restraint not to abuse his friend Epstein’s young girls — as though that were the greatest of his sins.
And I still am old – er.
Thus, since I have been doing this for well over twenty years and have effected precisely zero change, my motivations, as well as my strength, have declined.
Hey, even my MMT pals still believe that a Jobs Guarantee would be a viable solution to unemployment, and federal deficit spending causes inflation.
So, what the hell?
Lately, I’ve speculated that what we term quantum “weirdness” is absolutely necessary for the existence of the universe (and thus, not weird at all), and that locality is a figment of our limited imagination. I’ll ask my AI friends about that.
Until America comes to its senses — or doesn’t — to tide you over, I’ll offer a few predictions you can mull about:
Our dear leader will continue his march toward Hitlerism, aided and abetted by a corrupt and weak Congress and an even more corrupt Supreme Court.
We will enter a deep recession, which will be blamed on Democrats, immigrants, the poor, Jews, and liberals, in no particular order.
In response to the recession, the government will institute austerity measures, which will cause a depression.
The following programs will be cut because they are “unaffordable,” (meaning they benefit those who are not rich): Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, “food stamps”), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Unemployment Insurance (UI), Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Child Tax Credit (CTC), Section 8 Housing Assistance (Housing Choice Voucher Program), Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), School Lunch and Breakfast Programs, Head Start / Early Head Start, Pell Grants, Veterans Benefits, Federal Employee Retirement / Disability Programs.
Food-borne diseases will become more common as more inspectors will be fired.
All federal government services will be reduced.
The military will take over more cities.
Airplane accidents will increase.
Our dear leader will introduce more programs to enrich himself and his family. MAGAs will continue to invest in those programs and lose their money, learning nothing from the experience.
Tax dodges for the rich will be expanded.
Books that mention sex, bigotry, slavery, gays, mistaken executions, glass ceilings, religious quotas, or anything that reveals any flaws in America will be burned to “protect our children.”
Criticism of the government or politicians will be subject to punishment. (Harvard, take note.)
It will be determined that the Constitution really doesn’t provide for a two-term Presidential limit, and even if it does, dear leader will avoid it by running as a VP, then “allowing” the President to resign.
The Second Amendment again will be reinterpreted, this time to mean that anyone, regardless of age, mental capacity, or criminal history, can carry and use any kind of weapon at any time and in any place for any purpose.
SCOTUS will decide that past, current or future Presidents will be immune to all legal claims, civil or criminal.
SCOTUS will decide that any form of gerrymandering or voting restriction is legal.
Millions of Americans will be unvaccinated, and so will sicken or die of polio, measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, pneumococcal disease. meningococcal disease, rotavirus, influenza, COVID-19, human papillomavirus, shingles, pertussis, and RSV.
Anyone, whether criminal or not, will be able to purchase and sell an immediate American citizenship for $1 million or two for $1.5 million.
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 