Because only deserving, financially stable babies should be fed, I guess.

Nine Republicans in the House of Representatives have voted against a bill that aims to facilitate the purchase of baby formula for those on low-income federal support programs. The Access to Baby Formula Act, also known as H.R. 7791, would allow low-income women to buy more baby formula through the federal Women, Infant and Children (WIC) program.

The nine lawmakers who voted about the bill were all Republicans. They are: Reps.
Andy Biggs (Arizona),
Lauren Boebert (Colorado),
Matt Gaetz (Florida),
Louie Gohmert (Texas),
Paul Gosar (Arizona),
Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia),
Clay Higgins (Louisiana),
Thomas Massie (Kentucky)
Chip Roy (Texas).

Explaining his decision, Gaetz said that passing H.R. 7791 would make the baby formula shortages "worse for most Americans. It will allow WIC to utilize a far greater portion of the baby formula market, crowding out many hard-working American families."

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SW-User

While WIC is a good policy overall, in this case it did seem to unwittingly shape the monopolistic blunder in turn created by the private industry in response to WIC contracts. The concentration of the domestic manufacturing contributed to the shortage (combined with the protection of those blundering domestic suppliers against non-US competition). WIC just needs to be tweaked a little bit, to prevent such concentrated domestic manufacturing vulnerabilities, as well as to enable access to other vetted supplies.

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/19/1099748064/baby-infant-formula-shortages

Honestly, right now I'd have more faith in the federal government actually operating this specific industry directly, rather than to leave it in the hands of the private sector — the profit motive of private industry (and protection of it) directly led to this shortage. That certainly does not equate with nationalizing all industries, and the state would still be in competition with the private sector overall in a hybrid model.

In either model, WIC should also be tweaked to gradually and permanently wean US infants off of animal-based infant formula (while addressing the fact that soy-based vegan variants can also trigger some of the same sensitivities in infants as dairy-based formulas).