Federal government shutdown strained Lincoln mother and her son who rely on SNAP

Mellisa Craig does everything she can to keep her 3-year-old son fed and healthy.

“He is my whole world,” Craig said. “He is the kindest, most loving kid.”

That daily north star was jeopardized during the government shutdown this fall.

Craig’s son is one of 155,000 Nebraskans utilizing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP or food stamps. The program ran out of funding for nearly two weeks in November, leaving many families concerned about the future.

‘Everything we get goes to him’

Like many moms, Craig juggles a lot. First and foremost, she cares for her son who goes to preschool for about three hours per day, “which he loves.”

‘’(It’s) working out nice for me as a stay-at-home mom with not a lot of free time,” Craig said. “He comes home nice and tired.”

As a single mother, she’s forced to deal with the stress of parenting on her own.

“I’m always thinking what kind of a human being I’m raising,” Craig said. “I don't want him to go into life with the same challenges that I've had, without a whole lot of family support.”

Her parents live in the Lincoln area but are unable to help with babysitting or financial support, having to work a lot themselves. And she doesn’t have the funds for the ever-increasing price tag of child care.

In addition to the big responsibility of parenting, Craig also keeps in touch with her case workers and cares for multiple medical conditions. Those include hypertension, ADHD, depression and anxiety.

“There are days where I don't do anything but pace, because I'm so overwhelmed with everything I need to get done,” Craig said. “I am thankful that I have the psychiatrist I have, and he has got me on meds that make it 1,000 times better.”

The mom is on a path of neutralizing the effects of her mental health conditions. Craig herself is ineligible for SNAP due to multiple felony drug convictions, but can use SNAP funds to support her son. Craig said for the last few years, she’s turned her life around.

“I have been sober for over three years,” Craig said.

One healthy outlet for her stress and anxiety has been utilizing her creator’s eye, selling crafts and renovated pieces on Facebook Marketplace to help make ends meet.

“Some months are good as far as my crafts and things that I can sell,” Craig said. “I go to the Goodwill and look for things I can repurpose. I like to repurpose furniture and redo it. I love contact paper and kind of make that my own.”

But some months, nothing sells. That leaves the mother and son with few lifelines to get by.

Matt Talbot Kitchen and Outreach, a Lincoln nonprofit, covers her rent. She pays utilities and keeps in touch with a case worker to remain eligible for that program, called First Hope.

Her son’s food stamps total $290 per month. And a program through the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services called Aid to Dependent Children provides about $390 per month to help with utilities and other parenting necessities.

Add it all up, and Craig and her preschooler have anywhere from $680 to $1,000 to put toward their monthly expenses. But with government aid comes rules. She uses all of her son’s food assistance for his meals. Lots of the dollars from her craft sales goes toward his snacks, too.

“I want him to be able to eat the foods that he likes to eat,” Craig said.

Her son is big on breakfast.

“Scrambled eggs, yeah, with toast and peanut butter on them. Surprisingly, he doesn't eat the cheese on the eggs. He eats just cheese plain. That's his favorite snack,” Craig said. “He'll wake up in the middle of the night and ask me for a bowl of shredded cheese. He's silly.”

She estimated they spend about $400 or more on food monthly.

Within that $1,000 or less budget, her craft sales try to cover everything else.

“Anything that I have left goes to toys, for rewards for potty training,” Craig said. “Everything else that we get, I have to find a way to make it work through the programs we work with.”

Shutting down food assistance

But by late October, the already resourceful family began stretching its dollars more than ever.

One of Craig’s lifelines snapped when both the State of Nebraska and federal government paused food assistance.

“I don't think I ate lunch during that shutdown at all,” Craig said. “I wait until he gets out of school and wakes up from his nap, and we eat dinner. He eats at school a little bit, which I'm grateful for. But, I would say there's a lot of days I go hungry to make sure that he gets to eat what he needs to eat.”

With food money sparse, she searched for updates in the news and constantly checked their SNAP card balance over the phone.

“We heard it's coming Wednesday, then it's not coming, then it's coming, then it's not coming,” Craig said. “So I have never had to pay attention to politics the way that I have had to pay attention this year.”

With her son’s SNAP dollars typically running out before the end of the month, the funding limbo left them without benefits for several weeks.

“I called my caseworker at Matt Talbot, like crying because I can't afford food without that,” Craig said. “And I don't want to let my kid down. It was the scariest month that I have had. The hardest month, period, for many reasons.”

She had to let other bills go unpaid, and her phone plan was shut off. And Craig couldn’t pay for a new set of tires on her 2001 SUV.

The food pantry at Matt Talbot kept their head above water. It was the first time the mother and son had to use the nonprofit's pantry since being accepted into its housing program about a year ago.

“They provided us with three really big bags of chicken that were the best chicken I've ever eaten. So tasty,” Craig said.

Through the first few weeks of November, Talbot saw a 500% increase in food pantry use compared to the same time period last year, according to spokesperson Alynn Sampson. Additionally, the number of people eating dinner at the kitchen jumped by 34% percent this year and people eating lunch rose by 24% in early November.

Despite all of the day-to-day challenges of raising a son, Craig has found a caring group of friends.

“But I am very blessed to have found the help that I found,” she said. “I worked my butt off for it, but I have a good team of people behind me that really makes sure that we're okay.”

SNAP’s back, but changing

After a federal court ordered the Trump Administration to make emergency SNAP payments, the benefits card for Craig’s son populated with $200, about two-thirds of his normal allocation.

That payment made a difference, Craig said.

“I was so relieved when I called my card, finally, and heard that there was money on it,” Craig said.

She didn’t wait around.

“I was straight at the grocery store, like instantly,” Craig said. “It felt good to know that that came back on.”

She is thankful Congress pushed through a budget to fund SNAP and hopes food security will be a priority moving forward, but Craig said vulnerable families were being targeted during the shutdown. She shared a message about food assistance to policymakers.

“Don't do it for the parents. Do it for kids that don't have a voice, don't have a say in the matter,” Craig said. “It is about them. It is about building our future generation, and they need that money. They just they do.”

Craig’s Congressman, 1st District Representative Mike Flood, didn’t provide an interview or a statement for this story.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson said, “USDA is committed to preserving the integrity of our programs and respecting the generosity of American taxpayers.”

Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services passes down the federal food assistance payments. Craig fears DHHS will be forced to allocate less money to people on SNAP, due to a changing cost structure.

Under new rules passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the costs of managing SNAP will shift from a 50/50 share, to a 25/75 model.

“As addressed in the September 4th memo to states, 25/75 refers to 25% federal and 75% state funding for administrative costs,” the USDA spokesperson said in an email. “As additional implementation guidance to states is made available, it will be added to the FNS (Food and Nutrition Service) website at: www.fns.usda.gov/obbb.”

Nebraska DHHS spokesperson Collin Spilinek said in an email, “the Department also does not expect to shoulder more of the costs for SNAP payments.” The state is one of the few which currently sit under the threshold of a 6% payment error rate.

“Beginning in Fiscal Year 2028, states may also begin incurring additional fiscal responsibility for SNAP benefit allotments if quality control rates exceed program thresholds (6% error rate),” the USDA spokesperson said.

Despite the stress of the 43-day Congressional gridlock and pending changes to SNAP, Craig said the Lincoln community stepped up with food resources during a difficult time.

“It's not that way in a lot of places,” Craig said, “so we do have a pretty good food network here.”

And the day before Thanksgiving, her son got the other 35% of his November SNAP payment.