Poor Americans spend nearly one fifth of their income on energy bills. Any bureaucrat with a conscience would never vote to cut energy assistance in the middle of such a brutal recession.
How much is $350 to you? If it isn’t much to you, then you must lead a lucky life. This amount often means the difference between life and death for many elderly, disabled and poor American households.
The last week of October The Department of Health and Human Services quietly decided to cut LIHEAP funding by 47%. That is roughly 2 billion dollars total and those cuts mean about 1/2 the annual budget of many state heat assistance programs is gone.
Advocates for the poor are worried what this will mean to their already stretched programs. The average American family spends 4% of their income on energy bills. American families living at or below 150% federal poverty levels spend 19% of their income on energy.
LIHEAP is a federally funded program that provides assistance to people who spend a large portion of their income on energy costs. LIHEAP partially funds weatherization and Heat assistance programs. These programs make a huge difference in the lives of those that need them. Heat assistance provides a one time payment amount applied directly towards the energy bills of a needy family or individual.
$350 is how much the average person saves on their energy bills each year after their home is weatherized or about how much heat assistance a poor family can obtain per year.
Despite outrageous claims by deficit pounding conservatives; America is a wealthy nation and Americans should not have to choose between staying warm or having food or medicine. During these critical cold winter months those of us who advocate for the poor request that HHS preserve LIHEAP to levels at or above funding from last year.
This is the wrong time to put America’s most helpless citizens out in the cold.
As for the deficit, perhaps we should spend a few billion less on making bombs to blow up people in other countries.
*Weatherization installers find faulty furnaces and water heaters in the homes of the poor releasing near lethal or lethal levels of carbon monoxide. Yes, Weatherization workers literally save lives.