Let Us Begin Here

The US House of Representative's House Appropriations Committee has announced a Continuing Resolution Bill that contains an entire laundry list of budget cuts.

Among the cuts are 758 million dollars to WIC, otherwise known as women, children and infants. This service provides food assistance to low income families with children under the age of 5 and pregnant women. They also provide breastfeeding assistance and supplies when necessary. If you have a child with special needs for formula, they can also assist you with that. Contrary to what you may have been told, WIC is not a program for welfare mothers. Military families, families of police officers and firefighters, entry level teachers, all have incomes that qualify them for WIC assistance. So, your husband can go risk his life for his country, but his country can't help you feed his child.

And then there are the Title X cuts, found under family planning. 327 million dollars. Let's get this correct right up front:

THIS DOES NOT MEAN ABORTIONS!!!

Let me repeat that:

THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ABORTIONS!!!

The public family planning clinics that rely on these funds do not provide abortions. They provide pap smears, mammograms, birth control, treatment for STDs, and pregnancy testing.

NO ABORTIONS. If anyone tells you they do, they are lying to you.

So, what will happen once the public family planning clinics are shut down? Do you think people will stop needing reproductive health care?

Or do you think they will just go to the emergency room and cost ten times more?

So, remember those links in the previous post on how to find your representatives? Did you put their email addresses in your address book? No???

Well, do it now.

Here is how I write a letter to my congressman:

Dear Congressman Scott:

I am deeply concerned about the House Appropriations Committee's Continuing Resolution Bill that includes cuts of $758 million dollars to WIC and $327 million dollars to Family Planning Services.

As you know, the tricounty area has a large population of poor and working poor and now chronically unemployed who desperately need the services provided by these agencies.

I know tough decisions must be made, but to make them at the expense of those who have no other resources is nothing short of cruelty. And it will not even save money in the long run, as people will turn to emergency rooms for care. Then hospitals will have to recoup the losses by raising their costs for others, then insurance companies will begin to limit services and payments in response to the hospitals higher costs.

And to cut WIC services when so many of our servicemen and women depend on the food provided by this agency to supplement their low income, is an embarrassment to our nation. You will ask a parent to go die for his/her country, but you won't buy his/her child a gallon of milk?

Please work to eliminate these two crucial services from the chopping block.

Thank you,

Janet L. Nye
Charleston, SC

See? Easy cheesy, breezy.

Your turn!