As Congress barrels toward a partial government shutdown, the White House Monday warned that a program that helps millions of low income families afford healthy food could see substantial cuts.
The White House released a state-by-state breakdown, estimating that nearly 7 million people who rely on the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, also known as WIC, could be at risk of losing funds to purchase select food and receive vouchers for vegetables and fruit.
The program provides financial support for those who are low income and pregnant or nursing, as well as for children up to 5 years old.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said during a Monday White House briefing that WIC recipients could feel the impact of the shutdown within days.
"A shutdown ... puts the government on a complete standstill," said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a discussion today with the Pentagon press corps. "[But] the U.S. military is going to continue to do its job and protect our national security interests and ... those of our allies and partners as well."
The federal government could shut down on October 1 if Congress is unable to pass a federal spending bill.
Moody’s is the only one of the three major credit rating agencies to assign the United States an outstanding rating of AAA. Standard and Poor’s downgraded the United States in 2011, following the debt ceiling standoff then. In August, Fitch Ratings knocked America’s credit rating down to AA+ after the most recent debt ceiling debate.
The most direct effect of a shutdown would be through lower government spending as well as reduced consumption from affected federal workers and government contractors, Moody’s noted.
The inability to pass appropriations bills to fund the government was not always an automatic catalyst that forced government offices to shutdown. This only came about
It is also important to note that a lack of appropriations was not always an automatic cause to close offices. In fact, things typically went about as usual until the 1980s, when then-Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti decided that failure to pass new spending bills required government functions to shut down in whole or in part.
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