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WIC’s initials stand for “Women, Infants and Children,” and in Los Angeles, it serves 300,000 of them with healthy foods each month. Unlike food stamps, the program is limited to pregnant women and children under five, and provides vouchers for specific items.

One recipient is Alejandra Delfin, a mother of three, who says WIC provides a majority of her children’s food.

“They like the cereals, they like the fruits, they like nectarines,” she said. “They like peanut butter, the bread they give too, milk, eggs…they like everything WIC gives.”

Beyond the groceries, Delfin says, WIC is part of her community. She has been coming to the office on the corner of Washington Boulevard and Vermont Avenue for ten years, since she was pregnant with her oldest son. Her workplace is only doors away.

Inside the bland strip mall storefront, she sees familiar faces – Celia, Sandra, Alba – who have walked her through everything from how to breastfeed to the best afternoon snacks. Her son does well in school, she says, because she learned how to feed him a healthy diet.

Kiran Saluja, the deputy director of WIC in Los Angeles, says that is the kind of support the program aims to give.

“We are the extended family,” she says. “People don’t have those any more. We are the tios, and the tias, and the aunts.”

But, Saluja says, federal spending cuts could put tens of thousands of the people using WIC on a waiting list for aid. Pregnant women, the main focus of the program, would be given priority.

“If these cuts go through that would be the cruelest cut of them all, because we’d be telling a mother who’s pregnant, and maybe has a three-year-old, ‘We can serve you, but we can’t serve your three-year-old,'” Saluja says. “And no mother can do that.”

The cuts could also have a broader economic impact on the community, affecting stores like Mother’s Nutritional Center, a chain that sells only WIC foods.

“You can send a child into our store with five dollars, and they won’t be able to buy anything except nutritious products,” boasts manager Nancy Knauer. “They won’t be able to buy candy, liquor, cigarettes, snacks, everything is healthy.”

But Knauer worries that cuts to the program would lead the store to lay off some of its employees, 80 percent of whom are also WIC recipients.

“If we have to lay off people, then it really affects the community also,” she says. “The spending power – last year, more than 4.6 billion dollars nationwide was spent on WIC. So if that money is taken away, it affects every local community that we operate out of.”

That community includes people like Francy Anino, the mother of three-year-old twin boys. As she watches them playing with a puzzle in the WIC office, she admits that she doesn’t know what she would do without the aid.

“Spend a lot of money that I don’t have?” she says with a laugh. “Borrow money from people? I don’t know. I only have a part time job. It’s insane how much it’s helped.”

The proposed cuts to WIC are part of a bill that would reduce federal spending by $40 billion. Lawmakers who support it say that it is necessary to address the country’s growing budget deficit. Congress is expected to vote on the measure later this fall.