The Women, Infants and Children nutrition program usually receives bipartisan support, but the chairman of a House Appropriations subcommittee said the multibillion-dollar program still should be scrutinized.

It was unclear whether a closer look by Agriculture Appropriations Chairman Robert Aderholt would lead to cuts to the program.

The nearly $7 billion-a-year program is already subject to a 5 percent reduction under the budget sequester, and that could eventually lead to 600,000 women and children going on wait lists for service, according to the Agriculture Department.

Aderholt, R-Ala., said at a hearing Thursday that the program is consuming a greater share of the shrinking pool of discretionary money under his control. For fiscal 2013, the committee had $19.4 billion in discretionary funding; for fiscal 2014, that pool is expected to decline.

He noted that WIC’s mission is to provide nutritious food to children up to age 5 and to pregnant and post-partum women. The program serves on average 8.9 million people a month.

It is also the single largest discretionary program under the subcommittee’s jurisdiction. Because of that, Aderholt said, “we need to ensure sufficient oversight at the federal level as eligibility for the program has expanded, and states need to be monitored more carefully in their efforts to manage the program.”

Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-Kan., noted a February report by the Government Accountability Office that suggested the Agriculture Department may be giving state and local agencies that run the program too much flexibility in following income eligibility rules for qualifying people for WIC.

Although WIC drew Aderholt's attention, he and other Republican committee members focused largely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as the food stamp program. SNAP is the federal government’s largest domestic food aid program, providing benefits to more than 46 million people a month. Unlike WIC, the program receives mandatory funding and has greater protection from reductions in the annual appropriations process.

However, SNAP is an $80 billion-a-year program, which has made it a target for budget cutters. House Budget Chairman Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., renewed his call for converting the program into a block grant to the states in his blueprint for fiscal 2014 through 2023.

Spending on SNAP has doubled since 2007, when the nation entered a deep recession, but Republicans say a bad economy does not fully explain the program’s growth. Democrats and the Obama administration argue that the program is working as designed, by expanding during a poor economy and gradually declining as the economy improves.

At the hearing, Rep. Alan Nunnelee, R-Miss., asked whether there were steps the Agriculture Department could take to reduce SNAP spending.

“Food stamps is growing at a rate we can’t sustain. Now even as unemployment is going down, what we’re spending on food stamps is going up,” Nunnelee said. “As a member of the Appropriations Committee, I can tell you we can’t continue to spend this kind of money. What can we do to save money?”

Audrey Rowe, administrator for the Food and Nutrition Service at the Agriculture Department, said SNAP levels are starting to decline in some states as the economy improves. Rowe said that’s an indicator that eventually program costs will come down.

“There are things we are doing administratively — looking at, certainly, fraud and any trafficking activities to make sure that we are spending the dollars that are in the program appropriately and efficiently,” Rowe said. “The real answer is to have a more robust economy so that people can have sufficient resources to put food on their tables.”

Nunnelee and other committee members also expressed concerns about categorical eligibility, a process states can use to more quickly identify people who might qualify for benefits. The GAO expressed concern in past reports that some states allowed eligibility if applicants received brochures or other non-cash assistance from other programs for low-income people.

Rowe told the subcommittee that someone with categorical eligibility did not automatically qualify for SNAP and still had to meet state and federal income requirements. However, she said that under categorical eligibility states had more latitude in considering a person’s assets. She said that 1 percent of the program’s benefits go to people who enrolled in SNAP through the more streamlined process.

Aderholt said there should be greater consistency on asset levels and asked Rowe to work with the committee on possible ways to establish uniformity.

“These are all issues that I think that we can discuss as we seek to add consistency across the states in regards to assets,” Rowe said.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said the subcommittee should be more even-handed in scrutinizing federal programs.

"We have other farm programs with direct payments; we continue to send direct payments to people who are dead and who have been dead for several years. We ought to try to take a look at tha tin terms of what the loss is in that area in terms of waste," DeLauro said.