Sponsors (73)
The bill modernizes and speeds access to WIC—through provisional income-based certification, remote issuance, and EBT—benefiting many low-income families, but it risks creating gaps or exclusions for digitally underserved participants and imposes costs, administrative burdens, fraud, and privacy challenges that states must manage.
Low-income pregnant and postpartum women, infants, and children: gain faster and easier access to WIC through provisional income-based certification plus remote issuance (mailing/EBT) and remote technologies, reducing delays in receiving benefits.
Parents and low-income participants who lack transport or childcare: can receive food instruments remotely or by mail and experience faster benefit delivery, lowering the burden of in-person visits.
WIC participants and small retailers: explicit authorization of electronic benefits (EBT) modernizes transactions, may increase retailer acceptance, and aligns WIC with other nutrition programs.
Participants provisionally certified remotely: risk abrupt loss of WIC benefits if required anthropometric (height/weight) data aren’t collected within 90 days, creating potential gaps in nutrition support.
Participants without reliable mail, phone, internet, or digital literacy (including many rural households): could be disadvantaged if programs shift toward remote/electronic delivery, risking reduced access.
State WIC agencies and federal administrators: face additional administrative burdens and implementation costs (EBT systems, reprogramming, vendor contracts, collecting required data, ensuring ADA compliance, and preparing reports) that could strain resources and divert staff from service delivery.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Requires in-person WIC certification options, sets timelines for collecting nutritional data after remote certification, allows interim income-based certification, expands remote/EBT issuance, and mandates a one-year report on remote tech.
Introduced February 21, 2025 by Brian K. Fitzpatrick · Last progress February 21, 2025
Makes changes to how the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) delivers certification, nutritional assessments, and benefits. It requires state agencies to offer in-person certification and evaluation options, sets deadlines for collecting height/weight and other nutritional data after remote certification, allows temporary income-based certification pending full nutritional evaluation, broadens ways to issue food benefits (including mail, remote issuance, and EBT), and requires a one-year report on the use and impact of remote technologies in WIC.