Rising Hunger Threatens Families in One of the World’s Richest Nations

On an early June Monday morning, Jocelyn Walker patiently waited for her car clock to reach 9 a.m. before scrolling through her phone’s call history to find a frequently dialed number. With half an hour before her first appointment at Revived Styles, the natural hair salon she operates in a Detroit suburb, she prepared to make an important call.

“I usually place the call early in the morning,” Ms. Walker shared. She learned this the hard way a few years ago when a paperwork mistake abruptly ended her and her 8-year-old son’s food stamps and Medicaid benefits.

After waiting until 9:30 a.m. to contact Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services, she found herself 162nd in the queue. She missed a callback later that afternoon, forcing her to try again the following day. It took two months before their healthcare and food assistance were reinstated.

“It was a traumatic experience,” she admitted. Recently, while checking on the status of her income verification, she still faced a long wait with 33 people ahead of her on the line.

If the current federal budget proposal passes in its present form, Ms. Walker and many others will likely endure similar struggles repeatedly. The bill, passed by the House in late May, aims to reduce funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by nearly $300 billion from this year through 2034.

SNAP currently provides low-income individuals with roughly $6 daily for food. The proposed cuts would redirect funds to tax breaks benefiting the nation’s wealthiest 0.1 percent—those earning over $4.3 million annually—who would receive an average tax cut exceeding $390,000 next year alone.