The Trump administration has said while the federal government is shut down, tariff revenue will be used to fund a key federal program that provides food aid and other services to nearly 7 million low-income women and young children. But as the shutdown entered its second week last week, Republicans and Democrats blamed each other for that program being in a financial bind.
U.S. residents are divided on which political party deserves blame for the government being partially shut down, but politicians on both sides are right that the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, will remain in jeopardy the longer the shutdown continues.
“There’s a low-income food program, the WIC program, that my mom actually used when I was a baby. That program is about to be underfunded and it’s about to get cut off because Chuck Schumer won’t open the government,” Vice President JD Vance said in an Oct. 9 Cabinet meeting, blaming the Senate Democratic leader for the program’s finances.
Meanwhile, some Democratic lawmakers have used social media to counter claims such as Vance’s, placing the blame on Republicans.
“Funding for WIC is running out because of the government shutdown. American women and children will lose food assistance as a direct result of Republicans’ partisan policies,” Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware wrote in an Oct. 9 Facebook post highlighting the potential impact for people in her state. “Cruelty knows no bounds in this administration,” she said.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts also assigned blame to the GOP.
“WIC is a lifeline that helps new parents keep their babies fed. But thanks to Republicans’ government shutdown, WIC funds could run out in a matter of weeks,” she said in a Facebook post that same day. She demanded Republicans “re-open the government NOW and stop playing with people’s lives.”
Most federal operations stopped after Sept. 30 because Congress failed to pass funding legislation for the 2026 fiscal year that began Oct. 1.
House Republicans, along with one Democrat, passed a continuing budget resolution that would keep the government running through Nov. 21, allowing time for further negotiations on a long-term spending package. But most Senate Democrats repeatedly rejected that plan, opting to hold out for a funding deal that would also extend expiring subsidies for health insurance plans purchased through Affordable Care Act marketplaces as well as reverse certain Medicaid changes in Republican legislation that became law in July.
WIC provides healthy food, breastfeeding support and nutritional services to eligible low-income pregnant, breastfeeding and postpartum women, as well as children under 5 years old who are at nutritional risk. About 6.9 million individuals were receiving WIC benefits as of May, according to the most recent monthly USDA data.
Unlike some mandatory spending programs like Social Security, which continues to pay beneficiaries during a shutdown, the WIC program is run using discretionary federal funds appropriated by Congress and allocated to state and tribal agencies by the USDA. WIC cost the federal government about $7.3 billion in fiscal year 2024, and Congress approved another $7.6 billion for fiscal year 2025, which ended Sept. 30.
Without more federal financing, state governments, if they have money to spare, would have to decide whether to use state resources to finance the program in their areas and then request federal reimbursement when the government reopens.
News outlets reported that states were already burning through $150 million in federal WIC contingency funding for the shutdown when the White House said Oct. 7 that it had come up with a “creative solution” to provide additional money for the program. Citing authority under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1935, administration officials reportedly told congressional staffers that $300 million in unused revenue from tariffs on imported foreign goods would be distributed to states to help keep WIC funded through the end of October.
“The Trump White House will not allow impoverished mothers and their babies to go hungry because of the Democrats’ political games,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, according to Axios. A USDA spokesperson told us in a statement that the department “will utilize tariff revenue to fund WIC for the foreseeable future.”
A Challenging Shutdown for WIC
Although he said he was unfamiliar with the plan, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the leader of House Democrats, told reporters on Oct. 9 that the White House needed to act.
“What we’ve seen in prior shutdowns is that presidential administrations have continued to provide support for women, infants and children, and that needs to continue right now,” Jeffries said. “And to the extent that anything different happens, it will be another example of the Trump administration using the shutdown to continue to inflict cruelty on the American people.”
But that statement overlooks notable differences for WIC in this shutdown compared with earlier ones.
WIC historically has been largely unaffected during past shutdowns but is facing a more challenging situation this year, Nell Menefee-Libey, senior public policy manager for the National WIC Association, told us.
“We’re at the beginning of a new fiscal year, so Congress has not yet appropriated any FY26 funds to support continued operations,” she said in an email, noting that during the shutdown that lasted 35 days between December 2018 and January 2019, WIC was able to keep operating without issue because the program had received some funding through a continuing resolution that had already been passed.
Menefee-Libey also said that participation in WIC has been growing, meaning that state WIC agency budgets “were already tight,” and “generally everything is really expensive right now, so food funds aren’t going as far.”
When the government shut down for 16 days at the beginning of fiscal year 2014 in October 2013, she said participation in WIC “was decreasing, leaving states with more money on hand.” USDA contingency funding also helped states continue to provide services during that 2013 shutdown, the NWA said at the time.
The organization said it welcomes the Trump administration’s use of tariff revenue to keep WIC going this month, but it also emphasized that the short-term funding, however long it lasts, is not a permanent solution.
“There is no substitute for Congress doing its job,” Georgia Machell, president and CEO of the NWA, said in an Oct. 7 statement. “WIC needs full-year funding, not just temporary lifelines. It’s imperative that leaders in Washington come together and act immediately to ensure that millions of families can continue to access the critical nutrition, care, and support they count on every day.”
In a press conference on Oct. 13, the 13th day of the shutdown, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that Congress is “barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history” unless Democrats drop their health care demands and pass a “clean, no-strings-attached budget to reopen the government and pay our federal workers.”
For now, House Democrats have proposed another legislative option: a bill that would fund WIC and make it a mandatory federal program protected from future shutdowns.
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