Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. 2012
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Mr. McDERMOTT. I rise in opposition to this bill in part because the truth of the matter is that the $562 million that was cut in WIC funds last year did not affect participants. The reason it didn't affect participants was that the WIC foods cost less and there were fewer participants in fiscal year 2010. So the funds were not needed.
Now, today it's Flag Day, and we're celebrating Flag Day, and I want to celebrate that great liberal of the United States of America, Richard M. Nixon. Richard M. Nixon put this program in. Now, we all know he was a bleeding heart liberal. Right? He just couldn't wait to give money to poor folks. And he also, by the way, put out here a universal health care plan.
So there is some question you might ask yourself about why we have WIC. Well, the social safety net is like a spider web, and there are a whole lot of places that you have to help people. We have Social Security, and we have unemployment insurance, and we've got foster kid money, and we've got things for women and children.
Now, the Republicans in this session have deliberately set out to go after women and children. The first place was Planned Parenthood. We don't want to give any young women any information about anything having to do with getting pregnant. Now more kids get pregnant. They're 16 years old. They have a kid, and they don't have any counseling, and nobody talks to them about nutrition and gives them the things that they need.
What is the result of that? The result of that is more low birth weight babies, more babies born with poor development because they didn't have the nutrition during the cycle of development. Do you know how much is the average amount spent on a woman in the WIC program? It's $100 to deal with the problems of infants and children, on average.
Now, I happen to know, being a physician, that if you get a premature baby who comes in at 2.5 pounds, and everybody's so excited that we can save these kids, but let me tell you, it costs money. If you can deal with a premature baby at the hospital for under a quarter of a million dollars, you have a real miracle, and you could have prevented it for 100 bucks. You could have saved--if you're really about deficit reduction, I know you don't care about human beings particularly, but you do care about saving money. If you're going to save money, then you're going to put it into the children at the beginning.
Now, there's other reasons for that. If they don't get good nutrition at the beginning and they don't get good brain development and they don't do well in school, they drop out; right? And then we don't have a workforce in this country to do what needs to be done in this country. So we get immigrants to come in and do things. People don't want immigrants, then feed the children that you insisted that women have in this country.
You don't want anybody to have any planning on birth, and then the kid comes and you won't feed him, you won't take care of him, and you're going to pay the price.
I remember, there used to be a television commercial when I was a kid. It was called the FRAM commercial. It was an air filter on your automobile. And the commercial was, Pay me now or pay me later. Change the filter or you're going to pay having the engine redone.
That's why we have all these kids dropping out of school, because we don't take--that's why it's fascinating.
The children's feeding program in schools was from Harry Truman. Why did he do that? Well, they looked at the records of the Second World War and they rejected so many draftees because they didn't have good bones. They were malnourished. They were maldeveloped and they weren't fit to be soldiers. They put that school lunch program in so that they could make strong kids so we could have a strong army.
This business about saving 100 bucks on a woman who has a child and doesn't know--she's 16 years old, she's 17 years old, she's 18 years old.
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