Home heating assistance helps keep out the cold

Pocono Record (Stroudsburg, PA)
September 19, 2002

Congress should fight President George W. Bush’s plan to reduce home-heating assistance to poor families. We suggest that Congressmen Paul Kanjorski (D-11) and Don Sherwood (R-10) take the initiative to draft a bipartisan bill designed to maintain current funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Pennsylvania’s low-income elderly residents, the handicapped and working poor families deserve continued assistance in paying their heat bills

The president is proposing a drastic cut, from the current $1.7 billion to $1.4 billion, to the federal LIHEAP, which serves as a safety net for thousands of low-income people in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. The Bush administration cites recent milder winters, generally lower fuel prices and homeland security.

But what about home heating security? Pennsylvania is a cold-winter state with a high percentage of elderly residents. Last winter, the state Department of Public Welfare issued 370,000 grants averaging $246 per household. About 3,000 of those grants assisted poor Monroe County residents.

Public utilities also offer programs designed to help struggling rate-payers through weatherization, special payment programs and grants to social service agencies that help families directly. But LIHEAP provides cash grants, administered by the state Department of Public Welfare, that help qualified recipients pay their heating bills or repair faulty home heating systems. Some 30 percent of LIHEAP recipients are 60 or older; 26 percent are disabled and 18 percent are the working poor. Why should these people be jeopardized by a federal budget cut, especially a cut proposed at the very same time other federal safety nets such as welfare are becoming ever more stringent?

The Senate, including U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), is pushing to maintain funding at $1.7 billion for this year, with an emergency fund of $300 million to be allocated at the president’s discretion. But one congressman has introduced a new bill reflecting Bush’s budget-cutting proposal, and the bill now seems headed for conference. That probably means compromise — and a lower allocation to this valuable program.

We urge our congressmen to take action by introducing a bill or battling to maintain the existing funding that translates into an assurance of a heated home for our neediest residents.

LIHEAP has worked for years to keep Jack Frost at bay. Let’s keep it that way.