(ABC 6 News) – Potential cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are prompting alarm bells from state and local leaders as many of the more than 440,000 Minnesotans fed every month through the program could see their benefits impacted.

In Rochester, a group of leaders gathered at the Families First organization to discuss these potential impacts on Monday.

Among them was supposed to be mother of four and SNAP participant Stephanie Sell-Hilleshiem, but a sick child kept her from being there.

Sell-Hilleshiem is what you might call the queen of making it work.

“I will find a deal; I’ll find a budget,” she said in an interview following the roundtable discussion. “I mean I’m not an extreme coupon-er but…”

Sell-Hilleshiem spends most of her time at home, caring for her almost three-year-old son.

“It would cost more for me to go to work and put him in daycare than it is for just my husband to go to work,” she said.

On just the one income, Sell-Hilleshiem’s family is one of many in Minnesota that makes do with SNAP benefits.

She says it helps cover roughly 60-75% of their grocery bill.

However, the proposed federal changes to the program could change everything.

Congressional Republicans have suggested splitting the cost of SNAP with each state, something experts here in Minnesota predict will come with a price tag $220 million.

Combined with possible cuts to Medicaid and other federally run programs, the total cost soars over $2 billion.

“It is just an impossibility for our state to find all those extra costs to help make up what the federal government has been paying and to add it on to our already existing budgets,” said Commissioner Tikki Brown from the Department of Children, Youth and Families.

Even with Sell-Hilleshiem’s use of SNAP, her family is one of the lucky ones.

According to the DCYF, in 2023, 20% of households receiving SNAP benefits had no other income.

Many are forced to rely on food shelves, like Channel One which serves 14 counties in Southeast Minnesota.

Those shelves, though, are having their own issues.

“A $500 million cut to government commodity food happened in January/February,” said executive director Virginia Witherspoon. “So those trucks that were supposed to come full of food in March and April just did not show up.”

If that continues alongside inflationary grocery prices, Witherspoon says the need for food will only grow, and they might not be able to keep up.

“Right now in our warehouse, we have the least amount of food that we’ve had in at least seven years,” she said. “If something doesn’t give, there won’t be enough food and we’ll have to turn people away.”

These changes are newly proposed by the Trump Administration as it tries to make major spending cuts to its budget.

However, with a $230 billion target for the House Agriculture Committee, experts say there’s likely nowhere else this money could come from.

If these changes do go through, the state will have to decide if it can pick up the tab, a Herculean task considering the $6 billion deficit Minnesota is already faced with in the coming years.

If it can’t, eligibility requirements are likely to change – meaning some families could get less benefits, if they aren’t cut from the program entirely.

“My first and foremost concern as a mom is always gonna be my kids,” Sell-Hilleshiem said. “Always. And I think about everybody’s in the way that if it’s taken from my kids, then it’s taken from yours and it’s taken from somebody else’s. Who’s gonna help then? Cause everybody hurts then.”