Making Availalbe Funds for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, 2006

MAKING AVAILABLE FUNDS FOR THE LOW-INCOME HOME ENERGY ASSISTANCE PROGRAM, 2006

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the efforts of the Senator from Maine. She has been our leader and our champion on this issue of funding LIHEAP. It has been a bipartisan effort, too. Senator JACK REED of Rhode Island, on this side of the aisle, and many others, have spoken in favor of what she is attempting to do.

To describe it very briefly, for those who are following this debate, it would put $1 billion more in the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program across America. We said we thought we would need $5 billion this year. Then we only appropriated $2 billion. And in some parts of the country the winter has been fairly mild, including the Midwest. In other parts it is still harsh and cold. But wherever you live, you have found the cost of heating your home has gone up dramatically, between 30 and 50 percent.

Now, imagine if you are on a fixed income, that you are a retired single woman, for example, a widow, and you turn to this program, as you have in years past, and this year you need it more than ever. Or imagine you are a woman I met, a mother in the city of Rockford, with three small children. She is divorced. She is working. She is trying to keep this little frame house she is living in warm enough so her kids can be well enough to go to school.

She needs a helping hand from this program. She is a minimum wage worker. She works as a waitress. She does not make a lot of money, but, God bless her, she is trying. And this program says we will give her a helping hand. The sad reality is, as the Senator from Maine told us, there is not enough money in this program. So many of these people find themselves without the helping hand that we have promised all across the United States.

All the Senator from Maine and others are saying is, let's put enough money in this program to help the truly vulnerable people in America. These people are our neighbors. These are fellow Americans, the parents and grandparents of people who made this the great country it is today.

You look at the situation and say, this has so many echoes and memories of what happened in New Orleans. In New Orleans, when some of the nicest people in this world, who happen to be caught up in a flood, had nowhere to turn--and the Government was not there--the sad reality is that many of them suffered. We look back now, 6 months later, in horror to think that great city is still struggling to get back on its feet. Despite the best promises of President Bush and this administration, it is not happening.

I wonder if that would have been the case anywhere else in America. Would that have happened anywhere else in America, that a city would have been devastated, and 6 months later it is still not receiving the attention it needs because of a lack of leadership from this Administration?

What the Senator from Maine is saying, what we are saying, is that for individual families faced with the realities of life today, some of these programs make all the difference in the world. And the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program is one.

I met with a woman in Rock Island, IL, a retired lady, a beautiful lady, who works down at the senior center now just doing volunteer work. She counsels the seniors on how to apply for LIHEAP assistance so they can pay their gas bills, which, of course, is what we use to heat the majority of our homes in the Midwest.

So many of us believe that when we face these natural disasters and challenges in America, that it is a challenge to each one of us to come together as the American family. I can understand how the Senator from Maine feels. People say: Oh, this is just a big New England problem. Now, don't worry me because I happen to live somewhere else.

It is an American problem, my friends. It was an American problem in New Orleans. It is an American problem in New England. It is an American problem when American families struggle for the basic necessities to survive. Those who would divide us on sectional lines, on lines of economic benefit, on lines of racial differences--those people are just wrong because this country is strongest when it stands together. And we stand together when some members of the American family are in need, and they are in need today.

We need to stand behind the Senator from Maine on a bipartisan basis. We need to say to this administration: Do not leave more Americans behind--as happened in New Orleans. We cannot have it repeated in New England or in northern Illinois or anyplace across the United States. We need to come together.

As I look at this bill, I think this is reasonable. It is reasonable for us to stand up for our fellow Americans who need a helping hand with low-income home energy assistance.

Let me add something as well. Wouldn't it be great if America had an energy policy? Wouldn't it be terrific if we really had a plan that would move us away from our dependence on foreign oil? When the Senator quotes oil prices, do you know what control we have over oil prices? None. When the OPEC cartel and the sheiks decide production levels, and oil prices go up, America reaches into its wallet for its credit cards and cash, and the money goes right on the line, and not just to them but to the oil companies.

It is similar with natural gas. Wouldn't it be great if we had vision and leadership in America today that moved us toward less dependence on energy from overseas? We wouldn't be caught when we stopped to fill up our cars, or provide energy to our homes and businesses, with dependence on oil cartels or fossil fuels that leave us dangling on the ends of strings, as the producers control the dance like puppeteers?

That is the fact today because for too long we have let the national energy debate----

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Mr. DURBIN. For too long, we have focused this energy debate on where can we drill for more oil. Can we go to a wildlife refuge in Alaska? The honest answer is, all the oil in that wildlife refuge would not provide the energy this country needs for more than 6 months over a 20-year period. It is not an answer. It is not a solution. We control less than 3 percent of the oil reserves in this world. Yet we consume 25 percent of the oil resources. There is no way we can drill ourselves to a point of self-sufficiency.

We need leadership. We need innovative, sustainable, renewable sources of energy. We need better fuel-economy in our cars and trucks. America should be moving forward as some other countries are with a new vision on energy. Instead, we are faced with these crippling bills to heat our homes, and at the gas station to fuel our vehicles.

Today, we need to vote to support the motion for cloture, bring the LIHEAP bill up, provide a helping hand to the most vulnerable Americans, and then sit down and get down to business about an energy policy that really works for our future.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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