Senator Reed Introduces LIHEAP Program Amendment

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I am offering an amendment today to increase funding for the LIHEAP program, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, to $2 billion for this fiscal year. I am offering this amendment with my colleague and friend from Maine, Senator Susan Collins. Senator Collins wanted to be here to offer the amendment with me, but she is traveling from Maine in very difficult weather circumstances today, and when she arrives this afternoon she will take the floor to speak on behalf of this amendment.

I also thank my colleagues, Senator Dayton, Senator Snowe, Senator Jeffords, Senator Kennedy, Senator DeWine, Senator Sarbanes, Senator Cantwell, Senator Stabenow, Senator Clinton, Senator Dodd, Senator Kerry, Senator Levin, Senator Corzine, Senator Leahy, and Senator Durbin, who are all cosponsors of this amendment.

At this juncture I ask unanimous consent that Senators Chafee, Schumer, Harkin, Fitzgerald, Murray, Bingaman, and Lautenberg be added as cosponsors of this amendment.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. REED. As you can see, this amendment enjoys widespread and bipartisan support. I think it is clear, particularly given the weather today, that support is not unmerited.

Let me begin by offering a weather report, if you will. It is today, in Washington, around 30 degrees. But if you are outside, it feels much colder. The low will be somewhere around 14 degrees.

As you go along the country: Albany, NY, today, 17 degrees the high; Baltimore, 29 degrees; Chicago, 18 degrees; Cleveland, 15 degrees; Des Moines, IA, 12 degrees; Detroit, MI, 18 degrees; Milwaukee, 14 degrees; Omaha, 12 degrees; and my State, Rhode Island, they list the high as 23, but this morning when I left at 5 a.m. it was 5 degrees, but with the wind chill factor it was below zero.

This amendment is important because there are Americans who are suffering because of the cold. But it is not just about cold weather in certain parts of the country at this time of the year; the LIHEAP program is also important since it covers those hot stretches in the summertime when energy bills in the Southwest and the Southeast are astronomical and impact adversely low-income Americans.

We need this program throughout the year. We particularly need it today to protect people from the cold, but, as I said, those individuals who live in Alabama or Arkansas or Texas or southern California need LIHEAP in the summertime and it should be there for them, as it should be for those people who struggle today with the cold weather in the Northeast and Midwest.

In fact, yesterday the coldest place in America was Embarras, MN, minus 26 degrees. It is one thing to be in Embarras, but it is also something else to be freezing in Embarras. So I think we have to do something to ensure that we can protect low-income Americans from the cold that is affecting them today.

Twenty-five years ago Congress passed the LIHEAP program. They knew that people struggling with all sorts of expenses—raising a family, providing food to put on the table—they needed help in these cold months in the Northeast and those hot spells in the Southeast, to provide for assistance so they could afford the energy they needed.

During his campaign, President Bush promised to fully fund LIHEAP to help these low-income families meet their needs for heat in the winter and cooling in the summer. If he stood by his promise, the President would demand the $2 billion for which we are asking; rather, he has proposed cutting that money. This year, despite rising energy prices, colder weather, and increased unemployment, the President's budget has proposed to cut LIHEAP by $300 million. This cut would deny assistance to literally hundreds of thousands of Americans. The appropriations bill that we are considering today does restore part of this funding. I commend and thank Senators STEVENS and BYRD and SPECTER and HARKIN and their staffs for their hard work to maintain this funding, but we want to restore an additional $300 million to bring it up to the $2 billion level that will just be, in terms of purchasing power, equal to last year. We want to do that and I hope we can do that today through this amendment process.

As I said, we could add this $300 million, but we are not requesting new funding. This amendment simply requires the administration to give the States the $300 million the Congress provided in the fiscal year 2001 Supplemental Appropriations Act. Congress provided $300 million in LIHEAP funding 2 years ago to help these families meet their needs when energy costs increase, when there are significant disconnections of utilities because if you can't pay the gas bill or electric bill, eventually you will be disconnected and you will be without any type of energy.

All of these efforts in terms of funding LIHEAP have been urged on the present administration by the Governors. They understand because they are right there in the trenches, if you will, dealing with the issue of people literally freezing today and sweltering in the summertime.

Cutting heating assistance for seniors and low-income Americans is not the way to go, particularly when it is juxtaposed against proposed significant tax cuts. If we can't at least provide people with a warm shelter in the winter and a cool shelter in the summer when thinking about large-scale tax cuts, to me, seems somewhat inappropriate.

LIHEAP, even with our amendment, will be seriously underfunded. Providing this $2 billion in regular funding to the program will just equal the purchasing power of last year. What it does not recognize is that energy prices are soaring. Today, on the front page of the Providence Journal, there is an article about the cold wave that is sweeping our region of the country, but also the fact that in order to keep up with the demand for oil, which is our principal fuel, because the demand is so huge, our Governor had to suspend regulations to allow delivery drivers to work through periods of time when they are normally required to rest. What is also happening is the prices are jumping up because of uncertainty in Venezuela and uncertainty in the gulf.

This combination of increased prices, cold temperatures, and also an economy that sees more and more people unemployed, is the perfect storm, if you will, when it comes to requiring assistance for heating throughout the Northeast in particular.

There is something else that happens when people are challenged for energy, when they do without. They take their own improvisational means to keep warm. They turn the electric stove on and open up the oven. They go out and buy portable heaters. It is more than coincidence that the number of house fires shows a sharp increase in the months of cold weather in the Northeast because people are improvising. So this is another danger that must be recognized.

This amendment simply allows people to stay warm in the winter and to escape scorching heat in the summertime. It is something that is basic. It is something I believe we should support extensively. I am pleased and proud that so many of my colleagues have joined Senator Collins and me on a bipartisan basis. I hope this is one amendment we can quickly adopt and include in this omnibus appropriations bill. I hope, also, we can at least signal to those people who are looking for some modest assistance in these cold days that we have heard their calls, we are responding to our political leaders at the State level, the Governors, and we are giving them the resources to at least keep people from freezing in a very difficult time.