Whose Interest Is It to Put Babies at Risk? : Even the pre-Newt Republicans supported the food program for pregnant women and infants.

Where is George Bush when we need him? I never thought I would write that sentence, but with the Robespierre radical right rampaging in the House, one recalls more fondly a Republican President who increased funding for the Women, Infants and Children’s nutrition program (WIC) rather than gutting it.

During his 1988 campaign, Bush pledged to “request sufficient funding for important programs designed to reach young children--such as the school lunch program and the WIC program,” both of which the Newtmeanies are determined to destroy.

Bush made good on his promise by proposing a 9% increase in WIC spending in his 1992 budget. At that time, Senate Republican leader Bob Dole co-sponsored a $2-billion increase in financing for WIC, Head Start and the Job Corps, calling the programs “the best weapons we have in our fight against poverty.”

Of course he was right. How could any decent person seek to cut the WIC program, which provides food assistance and nutritional screening to low-income pregnant women and their children up to age 5? How is the national purpose served by underweight babies? The Republicans plan massive tax breaks for the rich and increased military spending and have yet to cut a single big-business loophole or agricultural subsidy, but they expect us to believe that the budget can be balanced on the backs of babies.

In 1993, the cost of serving each WIC participant was less than $40 per month. That year, 5.9 million women and children were helped at a cost of $2.8 billion, a sliver barely visible on the federal budget pie.

This may be the best thought-out of all government programs. To qualify, a participant must be certified by a health professional as showing evidence of health or nutritional risk. The required medical checkups and the food supplements have cut premature births dramatically.

In 1990, the Agriculture Department reported that every dollar spent on WIC saves from $1.77 to $3.13 in Medicaid costs in just the first 60 days after birth. WIC mothers, who receive monthly counseling on nutrition and the dangers of tobacco, alcohol and drugs, were also more likely to carry their babies to full term. In 1992, a GAO study credited WIC with a 25% reduction in low birth weights, which is considered the major cause of infant mortality and chronic illness, and concluded that WIC “more than pays for itself.”

WIC, which serves one in three babies born in this country, is clearly a fiscally conservative, pro-life achievement that the federal government has an obligation to maintain.

The scheme by House Speaker Newt Gingrich to cut spending for WIC by folding it into a block grant to the states is nothing more than an effort to take food out of the mouths of babes. Trust the states, Gingrich tells us, to siphon money to the poor. Why? Two-thirds of the states, including California, make no matching contribution to the WIC program, and as a result millions of needy pregnant women and infants go without. A malnourished infant in Mississippi becomes a national burden. The right of that child to the minimum needs of life ought to be federally guaranteed.

That’s why Harry Truman began the school lunch program back in 1946, and it is a measure of the wanton destructiveness of the Gingrich revolution that this wonderful program also is at risk.

The Republicans propose sharp cuts in funding for school lunches and, as with WIC, folding it into a block grant to the states. Their bill drops federal nutritional guidelines for the lunch program, again raising the specter of ketchup and pickle relish as basic vegetable sources, as they were once defined in the Reagan years.

Last year, 4 billion meals were served in schools to 25 million children, ranging from the desperately poor to the struggling middle class. Most of those served are white and suburban, it is sadly necessary to remind. The cost was slightly more than $1 a meal, making it perhaps the most efficient of all federal programs.

Why fix it if it ain’t broke? Because that’s what fanatics do in a cultural revolution. Just ask veterans of Mao’s Red Guard. Gingrich’s revolution aims to destroy any vestige of a federal obligation to protect the most vulnerable among us.

Moderate Republicans--and I hope Dole is one--had better wake up to the fact that they have a true zealot on their hands. It won’t be long before the Gingrich revolution starts eating its own. But I’m not counting on Dole or even Clinton with his veto to stand up for sanity. It’s up to those who care about kids to make sure politicians get the message before it’s too late.