A US Politics Story: The 2012 Campaign, Cuts, and the Effect on Pregnant Women and Children

Mitt RomneyLast Thursday, Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts and a 2008 candidate for President, announced his intention to run for the Republican nomination for 2012. His speech, made at a family farm in the critical primary state of New Hampshire, concentrated on criticising President Obama's economic record. Noting the administration's failures to stimulate the job market, Romney accused the President of creating his own “misery index” for the American people.

The speech was standard campaign fare --- short on details and full of rhetoric –-- but it did contain one commitment that stood out among the run-of-the-mill language. Romney, front-runner in the betting markets for the Republican nomination, and probably the most moderate candidate that Republican conservatives will consider, pledged, “Government under President Obama has grown to consume almost 40% of our economy. We are only inches away from ceasing to be a free market economy. I will cap federal spending at 20% or less of the GDP and finally, finally balance the budget.”

That statement appears to suggest Romney would cut Government spending in half, which isn't the case. Nonetheless, the "20% or less" undertaking does represent a significant cut in current levels of federal spending, while representing the absolute limit of Republican concessions on expenditure while the recession still plagues the American economy. Any Republican who now suggests spending levels above the 20% level faces the charge of being more moderate than Mitt Romney, and that would amount to political suicide.

The importance of that 20% commitment, while it won't please the conservative section of Romney's party, is that it requires cuts in spending that render the numbers involved in the recent budgetary disputes irrelevant. Romney has signalled that, for even moderate Republicans, the GOP brand entering the 2012 elections will be cuts, cuts, and more cuts. And by cuts they mean, to paraphrase President Obama, taking a machete and not a scalpel to the budget.

Meanwhile, the annual spending bills for next year are making their way through the relevant committees for a full vote on the floor of Congress. The amount of money discussed would be dwarfed by a Romney-level cap on spending. Yet cuts in federal spending are already leading to some painful choices for Democrats in deciding what parts of America's safety net to sacrifice.

While Romney was making his 20% pledge on Thursday, thehill.com explained the manoevures Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) was forced to take to restore $147 million of the $832 million due to be cut from the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) food assistance program in the 2012 agriculture spending bill. According to the liberal think tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: “House Republicans are proposing a cut in the WIC nutrition program that would force WIC to turn away 325,000 to 475,000 eligible low-income women and young children next year. This cut --- part of the 2012 appropriations bill that Rep. Jack Kingston, chairman of the House agriculture appropriations subcommittee, unveiled today --- would break a 15-year commitment by Administrations and Congresses of both parties to provide enough WIC funding to serve all eligible women, infants, and children who apply.”

WIC was established (under another name) in 1972, and is designed to provide “federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk”. Thus, it is not an entitlement program; funding is apportioned to the States annually as a grant that they distribute to as many eligible people as the money allows.

The programme provides the nutritional assistance for pregnant women, and those with children under five, who have incomes which are no more than 185% of the Federal poverty level. To qualify from June 2009-June 2010, a single pregnant woman needed an income less than $20,036 before taxes, and a family of four's limit was $40,793. In addition, anyone eligible for Medicaid or food stamps automatically qualifies for the programme.

The programme's standard practice is to issue vouchers which can be used at 47,000 participating retailers nationwide. They can be exchanged only for foods that have been authorised as meeting the nutritional requirements of pregnant women, breastfeeding women, and young children.

The Department of Agriculture website includes a long list of reports on the benefits the WIC program has afforded low-income women and children in the United States since 1972, which it summarises as:

*WIC reduces fetal deaths and infant mortality
WIC reduces low birthweight rates and increases the duration of pregnancy
WIC improves the growth of nutritionally at-risk infants and children
WIC decreases the incidence of iron deficiency anemia in children
WIC improves the dietary intake of pregnant and postpartum women and improves weight gain in pregnant women
Pregnant women participating in WIC receive prenatal care earlier.
Children enrolled in WIC are more likely to have a regular source of medical care and have more up to date immunizations
WIC helps get children ready to start school: children who receive WIC benefits demonstrate improved intellectual development
WIC significantly improves children’s diets

The website also maintains that the program has resulted in significant healthcare cost savings by preventing illnesses related to malnutrition. Conservatives are usually keen to point out the 'unintended consequences' of liberal policies; and without necessarily regarding the USDA's claims as correct conservatives seem now ready to ignore the possible consequences of their slash and burn approach. One success of WIC and other public nutrition programs to consider is that iron deficiency anemia declined from 7.8% in 1975 to 2.9% in 1985.

This is a case which makes the general point that politicians in the United States have failed to adequately explain the stakes involved in the deficit and debt discussions. An especially hard-hitting editorial in the New York Times lambasted the House of Representatives for their handling of the debt-limit vote last Tuesday:

Among the jokesters were 236 Republicans playing the politics of extortion, and 82 feckless Democrats who fret that Republicans could transform a courageous vote into a foul-smelling advertisement. The games that now pass for governing in an increasingly embarrassing 112th Congress are menacing the nation's future.

Democrats are as culpable as Republicans. Their "Mediscare" hobbyhorse, which they appear prepared to ride all the way to the 2012 election, obscures the issues at stake in reforming health care. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) was justified in calling out Barack Obama on Wednesday for the President's demagoguery of Republicans' suggestions for Medicare reform. Ryan intended his reforms as a beginning point for debate, not as the only acceptable solution to the problem of rising health care costs. That has been lost lost in Democrats' presentation of his ideas as the "end" of Medicare, and their politicking is only delaying an adult conversation on the subject.

Which is why Mitt Romney's speech, once Republicans understand what his 20% or less pledge entails, may prove a milestone on finding a resolution to the present deficit dilemmas. Erick Erickson, of the website redstate.com, is an influential figure in conservative Republican politics. On Thursday, he posted a short article that contended Presidential hopefuls should start forcefully addressing the debt-limit talks as they “have a unique position to stand above the fray outside Washington.” Perhaps that is too much to hope for, but if they do perhaps some currently “feckless” Democrats will step forward and explain, in an actual concrete plan, how they envision saving WIC, and countless other threatened programs, after the 2012 elections.