Ranking Member DeLauro on the Motion to Instruct Conferees to Reject House Republicans’ WIC Cuts and Adopt the Senate Funding Level
DeLauro: “At a time when families around the country are struggling to afford health care, housing, and other essentials for their families, House Republicans failed to provide WIC with the resources it needs to help Americans keep food on their tables.”
WASHINGTON — Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee, delivered the following remarks on the House Floor on her Motion to Instruct conferees to adopt the Senate funding level for Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) as part of the conference on the fiscal year 2026 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies; Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies; and Legislative Branch funding bills:
I rise in support of the Motion to Instruct conferees to adopt the Senate funding level for Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) as part of the conference on three fiscal year 2026 funding bills: Agriculture, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Legislative Branch.
Besides cutting WIC to unacceptable levels, House Republicans are coming to the table with funding bills that are filled with extreme, reckless cuts and harmful riders that have been rejected on a bipartisan basis.
We are now nine months into this Administration—and weeks away from the end of the fiscal year—and the cost-of-living crisis has only gotten worse under President Trump. Americans are struggling with rising costs of everyday necessities. They are living paycheck to paycheck. But the President and House Republicans are not laser-focused on the cost-of-living crisis. They are making it worse.
Instead of lowering prices, Republicans passed a bill to cut nearly a trillion dollars from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, which will strip health care coverage from more than 15 million people. Over $500 billion in cuts to Medicare will be triggered by this law, harming America’s seniors. In their signature law, Republicans slashed nutrition benefits for poor families, which will cause an additional 1 million kids to go hungry.
They did all of this in order to pass trillions of dollars in tax cuts for big corporations and billionaires – adding four trillion dollars to the national debt over the next ten years.
Since then, House Republicans have only doubled down on their attacks on the working class, the middle class, and vulnerable Americans. Last night, Republicans on the Appropriations Committee forced through their reckless 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies funding bill that assaults public health, slashes medical research, eliminates funding for reproductive health, and eviscerates education and job training.
They used this bill not to right the wrongs of their Big Ugly Law, but to make health care even more expensive and slash research into lifesaving cures. They cut funding for the National Institutes of Health, for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They slashed funding for State and local health departments, substance use prevention and treatment, and mental health services, and eliminated funding for tobacco prevention and HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment.
To top it all off, House Republicans continued their full-scale attempt to eliminate public education, decimating support for children in K-12 elementary schools and threatening the future of an entire generation.
This Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education funding bill was cut from the same cloth as the Agriculture funding bill we are preparing to conference. At a time when families around the country are struggling to afford health care, housing, and other essentials for their families, House Republicans failed to provide WIC with the resources it needs to help Americans keep food on their tables.
That is why the House conferees must support the WIC level in the Senate bill, $500 million over the budget request and the House bill.
This should be a simple ask. On Monday, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) asked for funding in the continuing resolution at the Senate’s level of $8.2 billion. And, just yesterday, the administration released its “Make America Healthy Again” report. The report commended the WIC program for its science-based approach to evaluating the health and the diet of participants and working to improve them.
Unfortunately, the report made no mention of the administration’s drastically insufficient budget request for WIC, or the need to fully fund vouchers issued to participants for fruits and vegetables. House Republicans must do more than pay lip service to the goals of making healthy food available to children and families. They must fund WIC at the Senate’s proposed level and support the fruit and vegetable vouchers.
House Republicans’ Agriculture funding bill also fails to provide the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with the funding it needs to keep Americans healthy and safe from foodborne illnesses and harmful additives. From keeping track of food recalls to rigorously inspecting processing facilities, to protecting infant formula, to banning toxic dyes, the FDA cannot accomplish its missions if we slash its resources. Given many recent food recalls, and particularly with contaminated foods and medical products that are imported, there is a need for FDA to expand its presence. That cannot be done for free.
We must follow the Senate’s lead on funding the FDA. The Senate bill provides $3.5 billion for the vital agency, $332 million over the House bill, and roughly equal to the 2025 level. This level provides significantly more funding for human foods and drugs work, two of the most vital responsibilities of FDA.
And even beyond the insufficient, dangerous funding levels for WIC and FDA, there are other reckless cuts and policies in the Agriculture funding bill that must be addressed in conference.
Despite Republicans claiming to support farmers and rural communities, their bill cuts investments in rural America – including grants that help hardworking Americans buy homes in rural areas, and programs to help build drinking and wastewater infrastructure in the rural communities that need it most.
House Republicans are using this bill to eliminate protections for small meat and poultry producers against large corporations that have dominated the market, forced small producers out of business, and price gouged consumers. We are in an era of unprecedented corporate consolidation: four companies control over 80 percent of the beef market, four companies control 70 percent of the pork industry, and four companies control more than half of the chicken industry. House Republicans’ bill will help these major companies to dominate the market, grow their power, and raise prices on the backs of hardworking Americans.
The other two bills in this package, the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Legislative Branch funding bills also need significant improvements in order to earn support from Democrats.
As it stands now, their 2026 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies appropriations bill would worsen the quality of life for servicemembers and their families, raise costs for Americans while helping big corporations profit from privatizing medical care for veterans, and hurt military readiness. This extreme proposal also furthers Republicans’ constant attempts to roll back women’s rights by restricting healthcare access for servicemembers and their families
House Republicans’ Legislative Branch funding bill—typically a bill that has been quickly agreed to by both parties—jettisons bipartisan priorities in order to aid and abet OMB Director Russ Vought in stealing funds from American taxpayers. This bill’s drastic cuts and restrictions on the Government Accountability Office and the Library of Congress will inhibit our ability to hold government accountable and will let waste and fraud run rampant.
It is astonishing that, for all the talk about finding and rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse, that House Republicans would defund the watchdog that is tasked with precisely that role. The only plausible explanation is that the majority – and the Administration to which it is blindly loyal – is upset that GAO has repeatedly found that the White House is stealing funds away from taxpayers.
This conference takes place as our entire legislative branch of government is being undermined. The Trump administration, guided by Project 2025 author and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, is unlawfully stealing funds that we, Democrats and Republicans in the House and in the Senate, elected by our constituents for this purpose. We passed it into law.
Russ Vought continues to withhold more than $410 billion from families, farmers, children, small businesses, and communities in every part of the country.
As the courts have repeatedly concluded, this administration’s disregard for our nation’s spending laws and Congress’ power of the purse has harmed every corner of our country. Children in elementary schools have been denied resources they need to succeed, farmers and rural communities have been left to fend for themselves, and communities have been robbed of resources to keep people safe. Russ Vought has stripped hope away from cancer patients and single-handedly made the cost-of-living crisis even worse for working families.
Make no mistake: this is all part of Russ Vought’s plan to centralize and hoard power for himself over all others. He is poisoning these negotiations. Every illegal action he takes is designed to spite Congress and make sure his dark vision comes to pass. Russ Vought wants a shutdown—he wants the country to continue spiraling into chaos so he can keep stealing from our communities and dismantling Congress’s power of the purse.
I stand ready to move forward to fund the government in a bipartisan way, and to pass funding bills that address the cost-of-living crisis that President Trump is escalating. But any funding agreement must reflect Democratic priorities, and we must pass full-year spending bills that ensure lawmakers—not President Trump and Russ Vought—decide how taxpayer dollars get spent.
Democrats want to lower the cost of living for all Americans and deliver critical services and investments to the working class, the middle class, and the vulnerable. That victory can be achieved through bipartisan cooperation to pass annual funding bills—signed into law by President Trump—that ensure this elected body’s commitments to our constituents are fulfilled. It cannot be achieved through another full-year continuing resolution that only increases Russ Vought’s power. If Republicans choose to empower an unelected bureaucrat over the voices of the American people, and over their voices, then Democrats will not provide our votes to such a dangerous usurpation of Congressional power.
I urge my colleagues to vote yes on the Motion to Instruct. Thank you, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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