‘The worst message we could find’: How Alabama’s IVF ruling raised the stakes for food aid fight

The Alabama Supreme Court’s IVF decision upped the pressure on House Republicans to back a funding increase for nutrition aid to low-income moms and babies in the spending deal Congress is poised to pass this week.

Some GOP lawmakers facing tough reelections in more moderate districts had been pushing Speaker Mike Johnson to keep a dispute over the funding from becoming a major fight in the spending talks.

And then the court’s decision hit last month, causing political pressure on at-risk GOP members over social policies to skyrocket.

“I think that’s when it turned from a losing message to maybe the worst message we could find in the funding talks,” said one House GOP lawmaker, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal conference matters.

The backroom pressure to support a significant funding increase for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, is emblematic of growing challenges Republicans face on social programs going into the 2024 election. In the House, some centrist Republicans grew particularly fearful about the optics of cutting off young children from food assistance at a time when their party was already facing backlash for the court decision in Alabama, which threatened to halt in vitro fertilization in the state.

Funding for WIC has traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support on Capitol Hill, but with far-right Republicans pressing for tough cuts to federal spending across the board, the program and its growing price tag became an unlikely political flashpoint in the government funding talks in recent months.

Ultimately, House GOP negotiators agreed to a major boost for WIC, in exchange for spending cuts to other programs. But the dispute still made some Republicans uneasy.

“There was a point where I was like, ‘What are we doing here?’” said a second House GOP lawmaker.

Other Republicans, though, recognized the speaker was trying to use the WIC funding “as leverage,” said a third House GOP lawmaker, “mostly because the Senate wanted it.”

Still, the episode created an awkward split screen with Johnson’s team and top GOP spending negotiators, who were digging in hard to offset any funding for WIC — something the White House and fellow Democrats had been demanding for months. Without an extra $1 billion in funding, the Biden administration warned, as many as two million eligible recipients could face lengthy waitlists for aid.

Some House Republicans noted the Senate never asked for the extra $1 billion in its own legislation, and Johnson was simply pressing for spending offsets.

Along with select grocery benefits, WIC provides breastfeeding and other support to new moms to help promote healthy child development. Nearly seven million low-income Americans receive aid through the program.

Even before the Alabama ruling, GOP lawmakers across the political spectrum were facing a fierce pressure campaign from a cross-section of powerful outside groups to encourage House GOP leaders to reject the House GOP’s proposed efforts to pare back WIC in their original agriculture spending bill and to approve a major funding boost. The original GOP legislation included rolling back WIC’s fruit and vegetable benefit — which lawmakers boosted during the pandemic — a proposal that angered key agriculture groups as well as anti-hunger advocates who supported the pandemic-era boost. Still, all but 27 House Republicans voted for the bill when it failed on the floor last fall.

Agriculture lobbyists, food banks, produce trade organizations, child nutrition advocates and food companies launched one of their biggest lobbying efforts in years to push back.

Among their top targets: vulnerable House Republicans who back WIC funding, including in California and New York — two states with some of the highest numbers of the program’s recipients in the country.

Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) said he was “glad we were able to provide strong support for [WIC] in the final bill” and noted he’s been a strong supporter of the program. “There are many low-income families across the Central Valley who rely on the nutritional support and health services provided by WIC,” Valadao added.

WIC advocates and agriculture groups also singled out in their campaign more conservative-leaning GOP lawmakers from Florida and Texas, two other major WIC states, where local economies rely heavily on agriculture and produce in particular.

“It wasn’t just moderate Republicans,” said an official from an anti-hunger group, adding Republicans “across the political spectrum” were receptive to a variety of arguments about the need for WIC funding, including that it would support farmers in their districts. The person was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations with lawmakers.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who represents a district President Joe Biden won in 2020, said he “was pleased with the outcome of the funding for WIC.”

Johnson, for his part, had few options and has been under intense pressure from his ultraconservative flank to secure deep cuts in this year’s spending bills, including by holding the line on WIC funding. The Speaker and GOP leadership aides rebuffed attempts from Democrats to add the additional WIC funding to previous funding stopgaps, as did former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Johnson and House GOP negotiators did, ultimately, manage to secure other spending cuts after they dug in on WIC funding in the recent talks.

Johnson appeared to reference the dispute over WIC funding in a post on X during the final days of the spending fight, arguing that there were “new Democrat demands that were not previously included in the Senate bills.”

House GOP negotiators also leaned into the argument that House Republicans wanted to return WIC to pre-COVID benefit levels, adjusted for inflation.

But Johnson always needed significant Democratic support for any funding plan. He acknowledged in private meetings with Republicans that his negotiating position was lessened by the threat of hard-right Republicans opposing procedural votes on the House floor.

“The Speaker has had to rely on everybody,” which opened up “an opportunity for negotiations,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a brief interview last week after congressional leaders announced a funding deal to advance six spending bills ahead of another funding deadline.

DeLauro added that funding for WIC was “non-negotiable,” as lawmakers hammered out the final details of the spending bills. Congressional leaders are now racing to pass the funding package ahead of another looming shutdown Saturday.