Audience members voiced deep concerns about the newly signed federal budget during a town hall discussion with some social services advocates and Democratic state lawmakers in Southeast Michigan Monday night.
The spending legislation is part of a more than 850-page law titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
It covers several chunks of President Donald Trump’s agenda. That includes an expansion of tax cuts passed during his first term in office and increased spending on border security and migrant detention center capacity.
Most questions during the town hall, however, were about cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid and food assistance.
Angela Martin is among the concerned residents who packed a community center in Troy to hear from the panel. Martin said it’s hard to balance her daily life with uncertainty for programs her loved ones depend on.
“I have to say it’s pretty exhausting after a while but I don’t think people can give up. Because, at some point, the voice of the people is going to be heard, and it’ll have an impact. At least we have to believe that, right?” she said after the forum.
Republicans who support the bill have said it would cut down on wasteful government spending and argue the tax cuts would spur the economy.
“Tipped and shift workers will no longer pay taxes on tips or overtime. Our border will be far more secure and criminal illegal aliens will be removed from our communities. The American military will be even stronger. And taxpayers will finally see better value for their dollars as wasteful programs and fraud are cut out of the budget,” Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Twp) said in a press release last week after the legislation passed out of Congress.
But critics of the legislation argue the plan will likely take services from people in need of assistance, be it through adult foster care, disability support, or other programs.
State Representative Sharon MacDonell (D-Troy) said there’s no way the state could cover the spending cuts to the social safety net.
“Last term I remember hearing that we had a $2 billion rainy day fund and I thought, ‘My gosh, that’s so much money. That’s wonderful.’ That’s not nearly enough to cover what we are going to lose with these Medicaid cuts and all these other cuts,” MacDonell said in an interview after Monday’s event.
During the town hall, Senator Mallory McMorrow took it a step further and said the state’s ways of raising money are already outdated.
“We’ve been operating [with] the same revenue, adjusted for inflation, since 1968,” McMorrow said. “If we were able to cut our way to prosperity, we would have been able to do that by now.”
It’s still unclear how state lawmakers will try to account for the federal budget while writing the next state budget. Lawmakers went home for an extended Fourth of July break last week without passing one, despite a July 1 statutory deadline for adopting a budget for the next fiscal year.
