From pausing WIC food assistance to payments to farmers, Iowa Democrats sound alarm over looming shutdown

Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart called on Iowa’s Republican U.S. House members to put politics aside and work across the aisle on a budget resolution palatable to the Senate to avert a federal government shutdown.

“Instead, Republicans are busy playing political games and trying to ram through massive cuts that have no shot of making it through the Senate,” Hart told reporters during a conference call Tuesday. “ … Iowans are sick and tired of this kind of politics. It’s past time for House Republicans to stop their posturing and focusing on keeping our government open.”

Iowa U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, a Republican from Marion, told reporters late last week she does not want to see a government shutdown and reiterated that her goal is to pass the most conservative spending bills possible.

Hundreds of thousands of nonessential federal workers would be furloughed and sent home without pay until a shutdown ends, said Ruark Hotopp, national vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents federal employees in Iowa.

Essential government workers, such as federal law enforcement officers, active-duty military personnel, Border Patrol agents, federal prison guards and correctional officers, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel will still report for work but would not get paid until after the shutdown ends.

Federal housing loans and loans to small businesses could be temporarily halted, and food assistance for tens of thousands of Iowa women and children who rely on the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) could be paused.

A $150 million contingency fund for the program that offers healthy food, baby formula, breastfeeding support and other resources to low-income pregnant and breastfeeding women and children up to age 5 would likely dry up within a few days, the Biden administration warned. The program, which costs about $500 million per month, would then be left up to the states to keep it running.

Speaking at the White House press briefing Monday, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who formerly served as governor of Iowa, warned the “vast majority of WIC participants would see an immediate reduction and elimination of those benefits, which means the nutrition assistance provided would not be available.”

About 58,000 Iowa women, children and infants are at risk of losing assistance, according to a White House breakdown of the number of WIC recipients in each state.

Food inspections could be limited or delayed, and nearly 5,550 Iowa families could lose access to federally funded child care slots, as the Department of Health and Human Services would not be able to award Head Start Grants during a shutdown.

Travelers could experience delays at airports as air traffic controllers and TSA officers work without pay. And critical research on diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's could be stalled, Hart said.

John Whitaker, former executive director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency and a former state lawmaker, said a shutdown would delay Conservation Reserve Program and other USDA payments to farmers. The payments are due Oct. 1, and the longer the USDA is delayed in making those payments the more likely it is the federal government will be required to pay interest on those payments, adding to its cost.

Construction of conservation practices and rural development projects, such as development of high-speed fiber-optic internet service or rural hospital construction, could also be delayed, Whitaker said.

Farmers would also lose access to updated federal data crop reports and key measures like employment and agricultural trends that guide business decisions.

As a result, Iowa’s agricultural economy would come to a halt at a critical time of the year when farmers have a short window in the fall to plant cover crops and take advantage of conservation programs, Whitaker said.

Whitaker served during previous government shutdowns, as did Nick Klinefeldt, who served as United States Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa from 2009 to 2015.

Klinefeldt said a shutdown would slow down criminal cases and criminal investigations and “impede our justice system.”

“As was mentioned, many employees get furloughed, which is not fair to them, and their job functions go unfulfilled, which is not fair to the American taxpayers,” he said.

Klinefeldt, Hotopp and Whitaker joined Hart in calling on House Republicans to hold their party to honoring the agreement House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., reached in May during debt limit talks with President Joe Biden.

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