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New mom: Sequester cuts to women's center would "break my heart"
Theses days, little Kayden is eating like a champ, but a few weeks ago he was malnourished and fighting for his life.
"I was scared out of my mind, I was scared out of my mind about his not getting enough," said Kayden's mother, Cierra Kelley. "He was two days old when I took him to the hospital. He was only two days old, I didn't know what was going on. So he went to see a lactation specialist at Piedmont health."
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Cierra Kelley and son Kayden of North Carolina were helped by a Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Supplemental Nutrition Program that is now threatened by sequester budget cuts.
/ CBSThe lactation specialist is just one of the services available through the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Supplemental Nutrition Program also known as WIC. Kelley is one of nine million WIC participants in the United States.
"My mother didn't breastfeed so she didn't know much about breastfeeding," Kelley said. "Any questions that I had she was always able to answer them. I was scared for the first week about breastfeeding, you never know if you are doing it right unless someone tells you."
In addition to breast feeding counseling, WIC also offers food vouchers which average between $60-70 per person, per month
"I am young, so with WIC you get food support, milk cheese, things like that," Kelley said. "You need to keep your body healthy. You have to keep nutrients in your body so you can pass it on."
But impending budget cuts could cut WIC benefits for hundreds of thousands.
"There are different things that could happen but in short $600,000 could be cut there are different options trying to run the program as long as possible and then making cuts as we get closer to the fiscal year," said Heather Miranda, a WIC supervisor.
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Kelley, 21, is in her third year of online classes to become a social worker, but she does not work outside the home. With almost 60 percent of infants born in the US enrolling in WIC, some argue that the program needs to be scaled back."
"I think it is hard because I don't think a lot of folks don't understand at the grassroots level what will happen to these families," Miranda said. "As being someone who works with these families regularly -- I had a woman who had to stop breastfeeding because she did not have enough food to feed herself. It's devastating to hear that and to know there will be cuts that will make it even worse ... it makes me incredibly sad that we would balance the budget on the backs of infants women and children."
If Congress does not act, half of the proposed federal spending cuts will come from defense and half will come from discretionary spending which will impact social safety net programs like WIC.
"Nobody wants to see their child suffer or go through anything," said Kelley. "If they cut the budget short and took away the opportunity to call down there and see what is going on with him, if something is going on with my breast milk, and something is going wrong and I am not able to get the support that I need, that means my son would suffer and that would break my heart."
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Wal-Mart style jobs were never meant to sustain an individual into and thru retirement, they are designed to supplement a student/retirement income, nothing more, period. If it doesn't pay enough then you best start looking for more income, put your miss-guided pride in your pocket and find a job.
I have never been without work, unless I wanted to be. When I went to work minimum wage was $3-$4 an hour, I never traded down in my future career choices, every move netted better opportunities . By the way I started out life washing dishes and bussing tables, I made the effort to implement a career change.
I have the opportunity to come into contact with many people in my line of work, the majority of longstanding unemployed I visit with choose to stay on unemployment because it pays better than re-entering the job market, this system is flawed. Unemployment benefits should be steadily reduced to a point that they do not pay better than minimum wage, allot of these deadbeats will cease to quit holding out for a management position.
We all have choices in this life, if an individual makes a poor career choice and that job is subsequently eliminated how does this become my problem or my responsibility. The jobs you so eloquently pine for are typically white collar jobs whose recipients chose because it promises easy fast cash, again how is this my problem, they made the choice, just like the choice to have unprotected sex and bring babies into this world that cannot be cared for by the parent, again it's a choice.
There are no guarantees in this life, jobs are a gamble at best. With your line of thought we should reimburse all individual gambling debt when it reaches an amount great enough to disrupt the necessities of the gambler or their family.
If people are not allowed to fail, they will never figure out how to succeed.
How about the 200 or so employees fired by Bain capital when they closed down SENSATA and ship the jobs to CHINA? Google SENSATA. Is it their fault Romney's company snatched the employment rug from under their feet? Do you want to stop assistance to them too? I mean really, republicans conspired and vowed to make Barack Obama a one term president. They followed up that vow with unyielding, unrelenting, sabotaging obstruction to stop every proposal President Obama and Democrats put forth to help ordinary Americans and revive the economy.
Demented teabaggers are carrying the water for their fellow bedsheet and pillow case wearing republicans. This is why things are so hard for ordinary Americans. So learn to have empathy because one day even you might need government assistance to eat.
So 40 percent of working Moms are paying for the 60 percent of non-working Moms!
Folks regardless of whether you are liberal or conservative...you have to agree that we just can't sustain this. Eventually it's going to be 80/20 and then 100% on WIC.
This is where we have gone wrong....feed them fish and they'll eat....teach them to fish and they'll eat for life!!
pleaseletitbeso,
Like most selfish republicans you and those who agree with you have yet to learn no man is a island.
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So just to clarify,
I have spent the last 30 or so years working 5 to 6 days a week, making huge sacrifices in my life to become a professional in my field, putting up with plenty of hate and discontent all along the way, trying to live a fiscally responsible life by not buying what I could not readily afford and teaching those same values to my children.
So because I feel no responsibility to these people at all as I had to earn my own way all along and pay the consequences of my mistakes, this makes me selfish and greedy ?
Life is about choices.
When you coddle or otherwise support an addict you are enabling that behavior, it is the same for these irresponsible people that see welfare as a way of life. The fact that we continue to support this abhorrent behavior is a problem unto itself and needs to be phased out of our society.
I suppose there are many jobs where the money comes easy, politician, writer, entertainer etc. those folks are generally more in support of entitlement type programs.
When to pour your blood and sweat into a career, put your body thru pain and suffering to earn that living it gets much harder to be frivolous with that money.
For me to support an individual who does not have respect for anybody, much less themselves would be foolish, those kinds of individuals have no respect for the sacrifices I and those like me had to make to get to where I am at today.
As far as our Veterans are concerned, they should have the best care afforded to them for the rest of their lives, period.
Maybe if we eliminate the career welfare recipients our Veterans can live the trouble free lives that they so deserve.
How about the 200 or so employees fired by Bain capital when they closed down SENSATA and ship the jobs to CHINA? Is it their fault Romney's company snatched the employment rug from under their feet? Do you want to stop assistance to them too? I mean really, republicans conspired and vowed to make Barack Obama a one term president. They followed up that vow with unyielding, unrelenting, sabotaging obstruction to stop every proposal President Obama and Democrats put forth to help ordinary Americans and revive the economy.
Demented teabaggers are carrying the water for their fellow bedsheet and pillow case wearing republicans. This is why things are so hard for ordinary Americans. So learn to have empathy because one day even you might need government assistance to eat.
By the way, the article doesn't mention even once that there are thousands of private (read: non-government) institutions and programs that provide people with the exact same benefits the government does, yet liberals find flaws with all of them. Liberals: the most sexist, racist and bigoted group to ever exist.
because he is weak and wants to be famous. He can't decide if he wants to be Abraham Lincoln or Bill Clinton, he's afraid to be who he really is because no one would like him if we found out. Obama is the downfall of America along with his crooked administration and glamour worshiping students who only ended up with no jobs and insurance they will probably never use.