Early on, the denizens of Team Trump decided that this was the perfect opportunity to test just how mean a country we could become before the Republican voters that elected them decided there was a limit beyond which even they would not go. This is how we get such initiatives as their proposal to eliminate LIHEAP, a program that helps low-income Americans get heating aid during the winter. The program is intended to prevent them from dying.
Cutting off low-income Americans' heat during wintertime was not a prominent Trump campaign plank, mind you. He did not devote any memorable speeches on the topic; it showed up afterward, after he had staffed his nascent administration with conservative burn-it-all-downers and B-grade Republican thinkers who took to heart the party's mantra of cutting all government programs that do not produce weaponry or directly benefit rich bastards. But the inherent, targeted cruelty of the move is proving a wee bit unpopular in the Senate.
Forty-three senators from mostly cold-weather states already signed a letter urging the Republican chairman and ranking Democrat on an appropriations subcommittee to ensure funding for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known in many states by its acronym, LIHEAP (pronounced LY’-heep).
In Maine, the poorest state in New England, the program helped about 77,000 people over the past winter, and those numbers represented less than a quarter of eligible households, said Deborah Turcotte of MaineHousing, which helps to run the program.
Which means that Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, is one of the quiet voices against eliminating it. Sen. Collins seems to spend the majority of her time these days making halfhearted stabs at keeping the people that voted for her alive, or rather piping up with gentle observations that perhaps the party should not be spending quite so much effort attempting to kill them. This is more than good enough to earn the Republican a "moderate" label in a House and Senate that considers such thoughts quaint and old-fashioned and just plain odd.
But it's difficult to know just what the Senate will really do here. Conventional wisdom says that the Senate wouldn't dare eliminate the funding or even cut it too deeply; like Collins, senators from cold-weather states are keenly aware of the popularity of the program. It's the sort of thing that generates alarm in home-state newspapers; reporters have no difficulty finding retired seniors or other highly relatable faces who will suffer directly if their senators support the move—but the same can be said about slashing health insurance programs in every state, and Senate Republicans are nearly unanimous in their support for that.
It would probably be unwise to assume that Senate Republicans would not dare do an inhumane thing for fear of public backlash. Not just when it comes to heating aid, but for the duration; the gene seems to have been removed from this particular crop of leaders. They seem to fear no retribution at all, at the polls, and their response to public anger at their public forums has been to simply cancel the forums, citing incivility from the people who will be harmed by their votes.
So yes, it's possible the Senate will indeed work out a deal to cut the program. There's no gain in pretending at a lower moral bound here, when there hasn't been one identified anywhere else. We'll have to keep our eyes on this one too.