Throwing Stones

A version of this column originally appeared in Michigan Advance.

As children, one of the first things we’re taught is not to throw things. We can hit something and damage or break it. We can hit someone else and hurt them. And it can bounce back at us, hurting us in the process. This lesson is often painful to learn.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that the Michigan House of Representatives learned this lesson based on the recent budget it passed.

It would be easy to pan this House budget proposal as unserious. After all, a number of the cuts are in federal funds that are generally restricted in use to a single program or a few purposes. Cutting programs using these federal dollars doesn’t accomplish much for the state — they don’t always realize savings on the state funding side of the budget nor can we redirect the federal funds to other priorities.

Instead, they simply sit in the state’s bank account or, worse, get returned to the federal government to be redistributed to other states. This results in nothing outside of harming Michiganders who rely on those state services.

However, the House Republican budget proposal is serious — it is seriously flawed and will result in serious harm. The cuts made under the guise of rooting out “waste, fraud and abuse” will — just like the harmful federal megabill passed earlier this year — affect the lives and livelihoods of millions of Michiganders.

The stone thrown by this budget will break systems like health care, harm communities and the economy, dismantle support for K-12 schools and some of Michigan’s universities and hurt the Michiganders that lawmakers claim to represent.

The House budget proposal doubles down on the tactics taken by policymakers in Washington in the federal megabill. The budget assumes the possibility of deep cuts in Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and provides no meaningful way to fill those gaps. More Michiganders will become sicker, families will go hungry, and our grocery stores, health providers and hospitals will all struggle. And in a state where some communities already lack a grocery store or an easily accessible hospital, these cuts will just make it worse.

Ultimately, this will affect all 10 million Michiganders, who will have to drive farther to find healthy fruits and vegetables or a doctor who provides specialized care, will have to wait longer to be seen by primary care physicians for routine care, and will have to pay more for daily needs.

What’s worse is that the passed budget goes far beyond the federal cuts. It reduces funding for Double Up Food Bucks, which incentivizes SNAP beneficiaries to purchase fruits and vegetables by matching those dollar for dollar up to $20. This not only helps families remain healthier but also helps support local farmers who sell at farmers markets. It eliminates specific funding for universal school breakfast and lunch, which has been a huge success in ensuring kids have the healthy meals they need to learn and saving families money, instead rolling all of these dollars into a per-pupil payment.

The budget proposal cuts funding and staff for various food safety programs, so it not only makes it harder to afford groceries and feed our families but it also makes it harder to trust the food we are eating is safe and won’t make us sick.

Michigan’s best ranking in the national KIDS COUNT Data Book this year was health, our only ranking where we fall in the top half of states at 22, and our budget can help support the health of kids and their families, beyond basic health care coverage. But the House budget reduces or completely eliminates support for important maternal and child health services, worsening birth outcomes and long-term health outcomes for kids. It also reduces or eliminates funding for environmental health programs, like safe drinking water, which are vital not only for the health of our community but also for educational outcomes.

When combined with the huge threats from the Medicaid cuts, this budget takes a huge step backward in basic health protections.

Policymakers in Washington threw a massive stone when they passed the harmful federal megabill earlier this year. At a time when grocery prices are already high and our health care system is already stretched, their decisions will only make things worse. And clearly some of our state lawmakers didn’t learn from Washington, passing a budget that further disrupts services we all rely on. This will ultimately have significant and long-lasting effects on our communities, our economy, our businesses and all 10 million of our residents.

And it will be a painful lesson to learn.