A bipartisan group of legislators in the Senate, and Democrats from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce are pushing back against the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal home energy assistance program for low income households.
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, LIHEAP, provides around $4 billion a year to help families with heating and cooling costs. In 2023, LIHEAP served 5.9 million households, and got heat or cooling restored 261,000 times, according to the department’s records.
Earlier this week, the Trump administration fired the staff in charge of administering the program amid mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human services.
Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined Democratic senators yesterday in signing a letter to Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., asking him to “reverse course on any staffing or funding cuts that would jeopardize the distribution of these funds to our constituents.”
More than 90 representatives in the House have made similar demands. In a letter addressed to Secretary Kennedy today, legislators called the decision to gut LIHEAP “reckless and irresponsible,” and warned Kennedy that failing to reverse the decision “may cost these families’ lives.”
Earlier this week, Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee addressed a letter to committee chairman Brett Guthrie of Kentucky, urging him to hold hearings “on the Trump Administration’s unauthorized restructuring of HHS and termination of tens of thousands of civil servants.”
Guthrie should also “hold a hearing immediately” with Secretary Kennedy, “to get answers on these massive layoffs and reorganization.” Multiple attempts to get HHS to provide a briefing on the cuts, and to provide more information about the roles being eliminated “and the statutory authority that provides the basis for these mass terminations,” have been ignored, the letter added.
LIHEAP at the state level
Congress isn’t alone in calling for more answers with regards to the LIHEAP cuts. The National Consumer Law Center and the National Energy Assistance Directors Association have also demanded a response from Kennedy.
“LIHEAP provides heating and cooling assistance to about 6.2 million very low income households, and states need these funds to pay for summer cooling, winter heating, and emergency funding for households that need additional assistance and weatherization,” NEADA executive director Mark Wolfe said in a statement. “We are very concerned that the lack of staff will result in delays in the $378 million in unreleased LIHEAP funding to the states. If that happens, states can’t provide emergency help to families in need.”
According to NCLC, state programs that administer LIHEAP benefits have funding to continue operations for several months, however the cuts to federal staff put the stability of the program at risk in future fiscal years.
