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Sen. Jim Ananich (D-Flint) recently went grocery shopping on a $42 budget as part of a program suggested by Progressive States Network, a group that promotes left-leaning policies among and through state lawmakers.

(Courtesy photo)

LANSING — Two Democratic state senators took a "minimum wage challenge" to see if they could buy a week's worth of groceries on a $42 budget to empathize with people who earn the minimum wage.

Sens. Jim Ananich (D-Flint) and Hoon-Yung Hopgood (D-Taylor) recently went shopping on the budget as part of a program suggested by Progressive States Network, a group that promotes left-leaning policies among and through state lawmakers.

The move comes as debate over the minimum wage heats up in Michigan and nationwide. President Barack Obama plans to discuss the need for a wage increase during his visit to Ann Arbor on Wednesday.

Obama last month signed an executive order raising the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10 per hour starting in 2015, and has called on increasing the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $10.10.

In Michigan, a coalition of labor and civil rights groups is collecting signatures to increase Michigan's minimum wage of $7.40 per hour to $10.10 by 2017, and then tie future increases to the level of inflation. It also wants to raise the minimum rate for tipped employees, which is $2.65 per hour.

Raise Michigan hopes to collect more than 258,000 signatures by May 28 in order to send the measure to the Legislature, which would have 40 days to approve it. If not, it would go before voters in the November election. Lawmakers also can come up with their own alternative, which would go before voters along with the original petition proposal.

Related: Could Obama's visit to Ann Arbor give statewide minimum wage ballot initiative a boost?

Hopgood said he'd like the Legislature to act on its own to raise the minimum wage and tie it to inflation. He said that if the Legislature passes a lower increase in order to avoid the ballot proposal, "I would see that as certainly a positive sign, as long as it wasn't so small it didn't even matter."

He said it's certainly possible for one person to subsist on $42 a week in food, but that "it's not very glamorous."

"It really does open your eyes that you really can't be foolish with any dollar," he said.

While Hopgood said he's trying to live up to the spirit of the challenge, he said it "might be hard to track every single bite that you eat" given lawmakers' schedules of events.

Ananich shared photos of his shopping trip and a receipt for $42.58 worth of groceries, including canned soup, beans, cereal, milk, lettuce and other items from Kroger.

"I think it sort of highlighted the struggles people have," he said. "Someone shouldn't have to work 40 hours-plus a week to live in poverty. The kinds of decisions they have to make just to feed their family, it's just amazing."

The $42 is based on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's "thrifty" food budget for a male age 19-50. It's the basis of food stamp payments and would amount to about 14 percent of a full-time Michigan minimum wage earner's pre-tax weekly income.

Email Melissa Anders at manders@mlive.com. Follow her on Google+ and Twitter: @MelissaDAnders. Download the MLive app for iPhone and Android.