Delegation asks for more LIHEAP funds

AUGUSTA – With cold weather straining everyone’s pocketbook, members of the state’s congressional delegation are pushing for additional funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, both for immediate relief and for the next heating season.

“It is cold, very cold,” 1st District Rep. Tom Allen said last week. “We are going to do what we can to get additional funding.”

Allen and 2nd District Rep. Michael Michaud, both Democrats, are joining with a bipartisan group of House members asking President Bush to release $200 million in emergency funds that already are appropriated.

“Senator Snowe and I have joined with other senators from both sides of the aisle in writing the president and urging him to release the contingency funds,” Sen. Susan Collins said last week. “It has been very cold; I know I have been filling the tank at my house every two weeks.”

The letter from the senators urges Bush to release the funds immediately, given the low temperatures and the increased costs of energy. Last year Maine was able to provide $480 per household in heating fuel assistance to 51,000 Mainers, but this year it will be able to provide only $435. The average benefit this year will buy only 179 gallons of fuel, not enough to fill an oil tank even one time.

Some House members are discussing adding funds to this year’s program when the supplemental budget to pay for the war in Iraq is considered in March. Last year it was in March that Congress approved a $1 billion supplemental appropriation for the LIHEAP program.

“Adequate funding of [the] Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program is particularly important to our state, where low-income families, the elderly and the disabled face great difficulty in affording heat during the winter months,” Michaud said.

Allen said it would be difficult to get supplemental funds appropriated this year because of the federal budget deficit and because most of the federal government has been operating on a continuing resolution that sets spending at last year’s levels.

“We are in a difficult financial circumstance,” he said. “The tax cuts for the wealthiest people in 2001 and 2003 are a major contributor to the annual deficit that we face.”

Snowe said that in addition to the battle to secure some immediate help, Bush’s proposed budget for next year would cut the basic LIHEAP program by $480 million.

“Ensuring that families in Maine and throughout the country have the assistance they need to heat their homes during the winter is a top priority for me,” Snowe said. “The president’s recent budget request would result in the smallest appropriation of funds since 1999, when heating oil was less than $1 a gallon.”

Collins noted that the president has proposed an increase in the contingency fund, but it does not offset the overall proposed cut in the program.

“We all, here in Maine, certainly know how expensive home heating oil is this winter,” she said. “There are no indications it will be any less expensive next winter.”

The average income of a LIHEAP recipient was $12,000 last year, and 48 percent of the recipients are elderly.

“It is unconscionable to cut this program, especially given the high energy prices we have seen in Maine and across the country in recent years,” Michaud said.

Snowe said it has been an annual battle to fund the program adequately since it was started in 1982 and she was in the House. She said it has been a battle under presidents of both parties.

“LIHEAP should be appropriated at the authorized level by the Congress, currently $5.1 billion annually, and I will support every effort to provide this vital assistance,” Snowe said.

Congress uses a two-part process for programs. One measure authorizes a program, and a second appropriation measure provides the funding. Many programs are authorized to receive more funds than are ever appropriated for them.

“This won’t be resolved until much later in the year,” Allen said. “I would expect the funding bills will be passed in September.”

As for immediate relief, the most likely, according to the delegation, will come from release of contingency funds already appropriated. The supplemental needed to fund the war in Iraq has not been scheduled for consideration, but it is expected to be taken up sometime in March.