The Michigan House speaker signaled he will be blocking the Senate’s $71 million plan to help feed families amid a pause in federal food assistance, saying Thursday the plan is “fake,” “performative” and “political.”
House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, told reporters Thursday evening, Oct. 30, that the way the Senate passed the legislation would cause a delay in getting aid out to families.
“When we’re facing a crisis where the food banks are going to get such a demand, people are not going to get this benefit and they’re struggling to pay their bills and to get food,” he said. “The answer is not what the Senate Democrats did, which was to pass a bill that couldn’t do anything for many weeks. What we did was work together, look within the budget and figure out how we’re going to solve this problem now while there’s a need, and that’s what the governor and I did with this $4.5 million to the Food Bank Council (of Michigan).”
One reason the bill is “performative,” Hall said, is that the House can’t immediately take up the Senate bill for consideration and get it to the governor’s desk to sign into law due to a five-day layover rule.
The Senate could have bypassed this rule by working with the House to add the $71 million plan to a Senate bill already pending in the House, Hall said.
Even with the layover rule, the House would be able to pass the bill next week. The Senate approved the supplemental funding bill in a 27-4 bipartisan vote.
Hall also claimed the Senate also won’t be present next week. The Senate calendar shows sessions are scheduled as usual next week.
Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, D-Grand Rapids, declined to comment on Hall’s remarks.
Regardless of timing, Hall said, the proper way to solve the upcoming pause in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for the nearly 1.4 million Michiganders who rely on them is to utilize funds already in the budget.
He championed what he said was his work with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in disbursing $4.5 million on Thursday to help support food banks around the state. That’s part of a $30 million pot in the budget that can be used for emergencies like this, he said.
Due to the ongoing federal shutdown, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has notified Michigan and other states that SNAP benefits will be paused for the month of November. The USDA has directed states to not issue partial benefit payments.
SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, provides food assistance to lower-income residents. Nearly 13% of Michigan households, including about 492,000 children, rely on SNAP to buy groceries.
The average eligible household in Michigan received $335 in monthly SNAP benefits last year. Benefits are put on debit cards, known as electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards, that can be used to buy food at grocery stores, farmers markets and other retailers.
This week, Whitmer joined 20 other governors in calling on President Donald Trump to use contingency funds to continue SNAP benefits without interruption. Attorney General Dana Nessel also joined 22 other attorneys general and three governors in suing the USDA for what they say is an unlawful suspension of SNAP benefits.
Hall said the $4.5 million being disbursed to food banks around the state will cover the first two weeks of November. The Food Bank Council of Michigan, which will receive and distribute the funds, will provide state leaders with a report on how the money was spent and whether it met the need.
That assessment will be used to determine whether the state needs to allocate more resources.
“As that money runs out, we’re committed to working with (Whitmer) to find sources of state money to do the things that we can do, which is what we’re doing here. That’s a real solution,” Hall said. “That’s meeting the needs of the Food Bank Council as the demand is going to go up for them so that food is available in all 83 counties for people across our state that have a need.”
The $71 million supplemental funding bill passed Thursday by the Michigan Senate offers a four-prong solution.
The plan would allocate $50 million to refill EBT cards, starting first with those most in need.
Another $10 million would support food banks, and an additional $10 million would support a program to purchase and distribute surplus produce from Michigan farms to low-income residents in the state.
The remaining $1 million would go toward the state’s Double Up Food Bucks Program, which provides a dollar-for-dollar match on purchases of fruits and vegetables with food assistance benefits.
“Today, in the state Senate, our majority did our part to help,” Brinks said earlier Thursday of the bill’s passage. “But President Trump and federal Republicans can use the same power that created this emergency to end it – releasing SNAP funds immediately and ending the shutdown before the impacts get even worse.”
Hall warned that other federal benefits and support programs, like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), will also face pauses in funding if the shutdown continues.
He said the state doesn’t have the resources to backfill all of the lost federal funds, and he called on the U.S. Senate to pass a temporary funding bill to end the shutdown.
“What we don’t have the resources to do is to fill SNAP and WIC and every single one of these programs that are going to start coming one by one as a result of the federal government shutdown,” Hall said. “That’s where we need our U.S. senators to step up, pass a clean continuing resolution and then work out their political differences with the expanded time.”
WIC is a federally funded program that serves low and moderate income pregnant, breastfeeding and postpartum women, as well as infants and children up to age 5 who are at nutritional risk. The program provides nutrition education, supplemental foods, breastfeeding support and referrals to healthcare.
The federal government shutdown driving the pause on SNAP funds began Oct. 1 when Congress failed to pass either a temporary or full spending bill for the new fiscal year.
Democrats and Republicans in Washington continue to blame each other for the partisan standoff. That dispute involves Democrats preventing a spending bill from being passed until Republicans agree to continue subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
“Bottom line, the well has run dry,” a notice atop the USDA.gov webpage states. “At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats.”
Nessel and other attorneys general contend in their lawsuit that the USDA can use billions in contingency funds appropriated by Congress to continue SNAP benefits next month. In a USDA memo obtained by Axios, the agency claims contingency funds are “not legally available.”
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