Budgetary Examination of the Investment Potential of the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)

The CHAIRMAN. The House Committee on the Budget is in session for a hearing on the WIC Program, the special supplemental food program for women, infants, and children. Our witnesses today are five distinguished corporate leaders who support full funding for the WIC Program.

I want to commend you gentlemen and other corporate leaders who support your efforts. Your concerns and the urgency of your message reflect the fact that this Nation faces crises at home every bit as serious as those we face abroad.

We have just seen a swift and overwhelming application of American ideals and know-how to attack a dramatic problem halfway around the globe. We can and must commit the same ingenuity and resolution to solving problems on the home front.

The health problems facing the needy in our society, particularly children, are immense. Today we will discuss a program that attempts to address these problems.

WIC is a proven program. It works. It saves dollars, and it saves lives. USDA has found that for every dollar spent on the prenatal WIC program, just the Medicaid savings during the first 60 days after birth range from $1.77 to $3.13 for newborns and mothers and from $2.84 to $3.90 for newborns only. That is a substantial and rapid return on investment.

Good nutrition during pregnancy, infancy and early childhood are essential to a child's physical and mental development. It is a vital element of preventive health care. WIC is a critical program for making sure that good nutrition is available during these key months and years in a mother's, a baby's, and a child's life.

Regarding the WIC Program, increasing funding is not just a question of compassion, although surely providing full funding for the WIC Program could be justified on the basis of compassion alone. This is a question of commonsense.

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The gentlemen before us today got to where they are on the corporate ladder for the same reason they are here before us now. They are good businessmen. They know that the WIC Program, as vital as it is to the lives of millions of families, is just as important to the future of American business, American competitiveness, and the Nation's economy, because children who cannot learn cannot become productive members of society.

They are here to tell us that the Nation's ability to produce the workers and the corporate leaders of the future depends on the health of our children and their ability to learn.

A number of our witnesses are active board members of the Committee for Economic Development, a group of corporate leaders which has issued a report calling for increased investment not only in the WIC Program, but also in other education and childhood development programs. The report recognizes that investment in programs with a proven financial as well as human return-WIC, Head Start, compensatory education, childhood immunization, and others-makes sense from an economic and budgetary point of

view.

I hope our witnesses' testimony today will receive wide attention, and I hope the Congress and the President will heed their message. To introduce them briefly: William S. Woodside is chairman of Sky Chefs, Inc., and former chairman and CEO of Primerica Corp., the American Can Co. He is a graduate of Lehigh and Harvard Universities and is currently chairman of the Institute for Educational Leadership.

John L. Clendenin is chairman and chief executive officer of BellSouth Corp. He is originally from Texas and is a graduate of Northwestern University. He was named CEO of BellSouth in 1984 and is a past chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Robert E. Allen is chairman and chief executive officer of AT&T, a post he has held since 1988. A native of Indiana, he graduated from Wabash College and the Harvard Business School, and has worked in the telephone industry since 1957.

James Renier is chairman and CEO of Honeywell, Inc., a post he has held since 1988. He has been with Honeywell since 1956. A scientist and a Minnesotan by background, he is a graduate of the College of St. Thomas in Minnesota and Iowa State University.

Robert C. Winters has been chairman and CEO of the Prudential Insurance Company of America since 1987. He has been with the company since 1953. He is a graduate of Yale and Boston Universities and is chairman-elect of the board of the American Council of Life Insurance.

Gentlemen, we look forward to your testimony. Let me, if I can, turn to Mr. Sabo. Mr. Sabo would like to welcome Dr. Renier, and I recognize Mr. Sabo for that purpose.

Mr. SABO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And let me welcome all of you to the committee, but particularly Jim Renier, who we are pleased to have with us again. We saw Jim last week as he was here as chairman of a committee on education for CED, presenting a report, simply again pointing out the problem of children in our society, and his involvement which children goes beyond testifying in front of the committees.

He has been long involved in those issues in our community. And, as a matter of fact, Honeywell recently started its school for teenage mothers at their facility, which is working very well.

So, Jim, we thank you for your personal involvement and your company's involvement, and welcome you to the committee today. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Dwyer would like to welcome Mr. Allen from AT&T, and also Mr. Winters.

Mr. DWYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me join in the welcome to this very, very illustrious panel, and let me commend them for their deep interest in this very vital subject. Commonsense tells us that if we take care of the young people of our Nation and their health, their education, we never need to fear for the future of the Nation.

And I want to welcome Mr. Winters and Mr. Allen particularly, who come from the great State of New Jersey, and I anxious to read their testimony.

One of the things we are capable of doing around here is having five meetings going on at the same time, so if you see some of us get up and leave, you know we have some type of critical issue that concerns our State. In my case, it is the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory that is up before the Appropriation Committee. Thank you.

Mr. ESPY [presiding]. Are there any other Members who have prepared statements? If not, we will start with Mr. Winters.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT C. WINTERS, CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, THE PRUDENTIAL INSURANCE COMPANY OF AMERICA

Mr. WINTERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Sabo. Good morning. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to appear today.

We come before you with one aim: To improve the well-being of America's children. To do this, we urge you and your colleagues to set a goal of fully funding the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children, commonly called WIC.

We have submitted a statement which reflects our collective viewpoint on the program. I will summarize that statement, and then each of us will summarize his own individual statement.

As business leaders, we know the importance of human development. Our businesses cannot run without good people. And so, we have a personal interest in seeing the healthy development of our future workers.

But in a greater sense, this Nation cannot remain strong and free without healthy, well-educated individuals. We cannot expect to succeed in an increasingly international economy if the Nation's children are denied a chance to meet their full potential.

We are profoundly worried about the state of our children. Since the 1983 release of "A Nation at Risk," the public and private sectors have made major commitments to strengthen public elementary and secondary education. This emphasis was rightly placed since our public schools were failing. But the problems with our education system go beyond the classroom.

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