The Republican-led Michigan House moved Thursday on a $31 billion budget for the state’s health and human services department, slashing roughly $10 billion from what Gov. Gretchen Whitmer requested and tacking on new eligibility verification requirements for both Medicaid and SNAP recipients. See Michigan Advance’s coverage of the budget rollout for the full breakdown.

MDHHS doesn’t just consume a big slice of Michigan’s budget. It’s nearly half of it. That context matters when you’re watching the House carve $10 billion out of Whitmer’s proposal in a single Thursday session.

The House spread the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services budget across three subcommittees. Their combined numbers: $1.13 billion for public health, $6.6 billion for human services, and $22.9 billion for Medicaid and behavioral health. Whitmer had asked for $1.5 billion in public health, $6.9 billion in human services, and $32.5 billion for Medicaid and behavioral health. Every category got cut. None of the cuts are small.

“The department is being asked to do more work with fewer people, and that math doesn’t work,” said one MDHHS caseworker who asked not to be identified by name because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the budget.

Work Requirements Add Administrative Load

The department was already carrying extra weight before this budget landed. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed last summer, requires Michigan to put work requirements in place for both Medicaid and SNAP. Whitmer’s office said that means the state needs 589 new employees and $104 million just to handle the administrative load those requirements create.

The House subcommittee approved 150 employees and $22.5 million. That’s less than 22 cents on the dollar for funding, and about a quarter of the staffing Whitmer said she needs. Michigan is one of the states with the highest Medicaid enrollment rates in the country, which means the eligibility workload here isn’t small to begin with.

What the gap actually produces: caseworkers at MDHHS offices across the state processing eligibility for hundreds of thousands of Michigan residents, doing more reviews with less staff, at the exact moment their caseloads are expanding.

Monthly Checks and Bridge Card Tracking

The House proposals don’t only cut resources. They add new obligations on top of the cuts.

Under the subcommittee budget, MDHHS would have to run monthly data matches against other state agencies and federal databases to verify SNAP eligibility on an ongoing basis. Not a one-time audit. Monthly, every month, on top of existing casework.

The proposals also set up a tracking mechanism for Bridge Card use. If a Michigan resident uses their Bridge Card exclusively out of state for 60 consecutive days, the department has to flag the account and verify within 30 days whether that person still qualifies as a Michigan resident. Anyone who doesn’t respond or can’t establish residency gets removed from the program.

That provision won’t only catch fraud. It’ll catch people who travel for seasonal work, spend part of the winter with family down south, or leave Michigan temporarily for medical treatment. Those aren’t residency violations under the rules, but they can trigger the review process, and if paperwork moves slowly, benefits can disappear before the mistake gets caught.

The Funding Gap Nobody’s Resolved

State budget officials flagged a $1.8 billion shortfall back in February 2026. The drivers are the cost of implementing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, climbing health care expenses, and declining state revenue.

Whitmer’s plan included $780.4 million in new revenue to partially close that gap: higher cigarette taxes, a 57% wholesale tax on vape products, a new tax on online and sports gaming, and a 4% tax on digital advertising.

The House didn’t include any of it. Zero new revenue in their version of the budget. That means the $1 billion-plus gap between Whitmer’s request and what the House approved isn’t just a line item disagreement. It’s a structural problem that 2026 budget negotiations haven’t solved yet, and the people most exposed to that are the Michigan residents who depend on MDHHS for their health coverage and food assistance.