Anyone from around these parts knows that to be without heat in your home between December and March–particularly on the bitterly cold days–would be akin to stepping in front of a Mack truck. Not only would you really feel it, but it could very well kill you.
Maybe the Republican members of the House Appropriations Committee aren’t personally familiar with Chicago’s notorious “Hawk” or the winter tribulations of people in other northern climates. Perhaps they are being plain insensitive to the poor. Either way, their plan to eliminate the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program is downright cruel.
The program provides poor and lower-income households with modest subsidies that help them pay their heating bills during particularly brutal winter spells. Last year, the $1.1-billion program assisted 4.3 million people, many of them elderly residents whose Social Security and retirement checks weren’t quite enough to cover the gas bill when the temperatures really dipped. Illinois got about $60 million, which was dispensed in grants averaging about $200 each.
Congress has whittled away at the program over the years, having cut it in half since 1986, when it peaked at $2.1 billion. Illinois was hit with a 32 percent reduction last year. On June 23, a House appropriations subcommittee voted to eliminate the program altogether. Now the full committee is considering the measure. The Senate is scheduled to take it up in a separate bill in September.
This is one of those rare, sensible social programs, like Head Start, that is hardly ever abused and does exactly what it was set up to do. Congress should know its value. During a severely frigid period just two winters ago, 48 senators sent a letter to President Clinton asking him to distribute millions in LIHEAP funds “to prevent many families from having to face life-threatening cold this winter.”
Illinois’ Republican representative on the appropriations committee, Rep. John Porter, ought to be out front working to keep this program alive.
