Michigan food assistance recipients talk survival with federal cuts to benefits impending
Melissa Miles speaks during a Michigan state Senate Housing and Human Services Committee meeting on June 10, 2025. | Photo: Anna Liz Nichols
As a grandmother the last thing Detroit resident Kathleen Hurd wants to have to do is tell her grandchildren she has been raising for the past decade that their family has to choose between paying for housing or clothes or food.
But as a federal spending plan that would cut billions of dollars from food assistance makes its way through Congress, Hurd told Michigan lawmakers Tuesday she's worried that she won't be able to shield her grandchildren from experiencing the effects.
The federal spending plan, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is a plan endorsed by President Donald Trump to align federal spending with the values of the administration. Amongst other cuts, the plan would eliminate nearly $300 billion in funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which provides food assistance to 1.5 million Michigan residents, roughly 15% of the state's population.
'As a parent, you try not to put the stress and the concerns of adulthood on children… so to have to possibly say to my grandchildren, 'well, we either have to eat or not have a place to live, or we have to eat, but not be able to get those shoes or whatever it is that they need… is very concerning to me,' Hurd told Michigan lawmakers on the state House Housing and Human Services Committee.
Her request to lawmakers and her prayers are for her family and other families to not have to make children have to wonder where their next meal will come from, Hurd told lawmakers.
Food banks and pantries in Michigan have raised concerns with the Trump administration making cuts to food assistance programming, outside of the Big Beautiful Bill, in recent weeks, but the cuts expected in congress' plan has leaders in Michigan urging federal officials to consider the human impact across states.
Cuts to food assistance will cost Michigan about $900 million, the Michigan State Budget Office said in a memo earlier this month, adding that more than half of SNAP participants are families with children.
Michigan having to take over the cost of SNAP food assistance, which is currently 100% federally funded, presents a 'ticking time bomb' for the state, Sen. Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor), chair of the committee, said.
SNAP also boosts the state's economy, Dwayne Haywood, senior deputy director of the Economic Stability Administration in the state health department said.
A significant portion of Michigan's children and senior citizens rely on SNAP benefits in their household, Haywood said, but ultimately 70% of households receiving benefits have employed individuals. And Michiganders use their SNAP funds locally, at businesses and farmer's markets totalling $3.6 billion in the state in 2023, he added.
'You can only imagine the cost directed to market. It will be a cost. It will be… devastating [for] farmers,' Haywood said of the agriculture sector, a top industry in Michigan. 'That will certainly hurt us as we try to help our residents understand healthy eating…everyone in the community will be greatly impacted.'
Hunger is a powerful motivator and not always for good, Sen. Sue Shink (D-Northfield Township) said, remembering her childhood, hearing about how her father's family in Detroit had struggled to ensure every family member could eat, with some loved ones resorting to illegal activity in order to put food on the table.
'I heard from his cousins who would eat less to make sure that my dad had enough food,' Shink said. 'I will tell you, as the daughter of somebody who went through that, who saw the incredible damage that it did to my dad, and who knows the damage that it did to me that I still do carry every day. We don't want to do that to our people.'
The American Dream shouldn't just be survival, Melissa Miles, a resident of Hillsdale County told lawmakers. Currently, Miles said she's a student at Eastern Michigan University, raising an immunocompromised four-year-old as a single mom who relies on SNAP.
Hers is a story of survival, Miles said, as she is attending school to better herself and create a bigger future for her and her child, but it is dependent on her ability to not have to worry where her child's next meal might come from.
'If my family didn't have SNAP, I can't bear to think how much sicker my child would be. I'm here today asking you to think about… Michigan families,' Miles said.
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