Our Texas member and a mother of three children Ashley Gooden-Stewart shared a testimony at a Steering and Policy Hearing on Healthcare and SNAP. When Ashley’s middle child was born, she was laid off from her job. Because child care is not affordable or accessible, she’s struggled to maintain consistent employment since then. Without her income, money is very tight for her family. They rely on WIC, SNAP, and Medicaid to access health care and afford healthy food.​​

Here is her full story:

Good morning! My name is Ashley Gooden-Stewart. I live in La Marque, Texas, with my husband and our three young kids, ages 1, 5, and 7. I am a certified grief coach, non-profit founder, and a proud member of MomsRising.

I appreciate the opportunity to share my story today, and all you are doing to fight for working families.

My family has struggled to make ends meet as the cost of essentials has risen dramatically, and our child care crisis has prevented me from working full-time. The support Medicaid and WIC provide is critical for us, as it is for millions of other families. But now, this administration is refusing to fund these programs, putting our health and well-being at risk.

I first joined MomsRising because of my struggles as a working mom. In my experience, our economy is not set up to support working mothers. Here in the United States, working parents are forced to care for our families without the basic care policies people in other developed nations take for granted, like paid family and medical leave and quality, affordable child care.

When my son was born in 2019, I was laid off from my job at a health insurance company, where I’d worked for 3.5 years. Since then, I’ve struggled to maintain consistent employment because child care is not affordable or accessible. Where I live, child care programs cost hundreds of dollars per week, and most have long waitlists.

The best solution for me was to do contract work, but that is seasonal, spotty, and unreliable. Sometimes, my mom helps with child care so I can take on more hours, but she is a veteran with a disability and has limitations on what she can do. It’s been a real struggle.

Without my full-time income, my family has struggled to keep up with rising costs. As I said, WIC and Medicaid are critical for us. WIC helps me keep healthy food on the table that my kids need to grow and thrive. Eggs are expensive. Milk is expensive. Fresh produce is expensive. These days, it feels like everything in life is expensive. WIC helps fill in the gaps. The breastfeeding classes WIC provides are incredible, as are the classes on child developmental milestones and cooking healthy meals. Although I’ve been a mother for years, every child is different, and these resources are so helpful.

But for so many families like mine, the government shutdown is causing an enormous amount of stress, because WIC and SNAP are running out of funds, and this administration is refusing to use the contingency funds Congress approved to protect them.

My family has also received SNAP benefits, and although we recently lost access, so many of the families in my community that I support through my nonprofit depend on the support SNAP provides. I was relieved when I saw this weekend that a judge ordered Trump to release SNAP funds, but I’ve also heard that families may only get partial SNAP benefits this month. That would be terribly harmful for families in my community and across the country.

I’m also terrified because this summer, Republicans in Congress voted to slash nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid. Medicaid is a lifeline for us. It's the reason I had access to quality prenatal and postpartum care when each of my children were born. Medicaid enables us to take our kids to the doctor when they’re sick and for all their routine checkups. My older daughter has asthma and severe allergies, and Medicaid helps us afford the medications and specialists she needs to stay healthy. I have no idea how we’d access care without it.

It’s unfathomable to me that any lawmaker would attack programs that help working families like mine access health care, while doling out big tax breaks for billionaires and giant corporations. The thought that any lawmaker prioritizes a billionaire’s greed over my daughter’s access to her asthma medication makes my stomach churn.

I want to thank the members of this committee for fighting to protect Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. The cost of health care has skyrocketed, and these policies are more critical than ever.

We need every single elected leader to sort out their priorities. That starts with funding Medicaid and the ACA, reopening the government, ensuring there is no interruption to WIC and SNAP, and getting to work on the pressing issues that are holding families like mine back, including solving our child care crisis. Thank you.