Nothing But Empty Promises

The Day, New London, CT
December 5, 2005

Congress needs to put is money where its mouth is on energy assistance for the needy this winter.

Two-thirds of the families who receive federal heating assistance have incomes of less than $8,000 a year. That's why the federal program is so important — it keeps the poorest of the poor from freezing in winter. That's also why one of the few decent parts of the recently passed, but wholly inadequate, federal energy bill was that it authorized the federal government to double the amount of money spent on low-income heating assistance. The act of Congress authorized the amount of money to be spent on the program from about $2 billion to $5 billion.

There's a lot not to like in the energy bill, which President George W. Bush signed in August. The bill doesn't do enough to encourage conservation and was laden with pork-barrel projects. Many Republican members of Congress from regions such as the Northeast had reservations but voted for the proposal anyway, and several, among them Rep. Rob Simmons, used the increases in the energy assistance program as partial justification of their actions.

But the authorization was only that — a granting of permission to ask for more money to pay for the program. The authorization doesn't pay for the low-income heating aid. For that an appropriation, not a mere authorization, is needed.

But the White House hasn't bothered to approve of such an appropriation. The White House could have included in a supplemental appropriations bill the extra money the Energy Bill pledged to help the poor stay warm. But the White House didn't care to do what the bill promised it would.

So the upshot is this: The promise to pass a bill doubling more home energy assistance was only that — a promise — one easily discarded once the bill was passed. Yet it is needed, desperately so. Natural gas prices have gone up 50 percent since last year. Home heating oil prices went up 30 percent. But the money to help the poor pay their heating bills is almost exactly the same this year, $1.8 million, as it was when the program was first started 23 years ago. That's unconscionable.

Congress ought to live up to its promise to the poor — and the American people. Otherwise, congressmen who used the energy assistance aspect of the energy bill to justify their vote will be left empty-handed. And the poor would be the real losers.