Statement on LIHEAP funding

Even if President Obama and some members of Congress don’t get it, Gov. Peter Shumlin understands that people can freeze to death in the winter if they don’t have heat. That’s why he announced Tuesday that the state was going to supplement the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) after Congress failed to adequately fund the program.

Congress—at the urging of the Vermont delegation—appropriated more money to the program than the president had proposed. Vermont would have received only $11 million under Obama’s budget. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2012 that Congress passed early this month increased that to $19.5 million for Vermont for fiscal 2012. Nevertheless, the federal funding is short of the $27.5 million the state received in fiscal 2011, and Vermont is providing a smaller benefit—albeit to more people—than it did just a few years ago.

Vermont used to have a target of covering 60 percent of the cost of the average winter heating cost. Last year, it covered a third of the cost.

Governor Shumlin proposed today that the state allocate $6.1 million to LIHEAP. That, along with the $19.5 million in federal funds, is projected to cover 31 percent of the estimated average heating cost this winter.

This will be the third time since 2005 that Vermont has been forced to make up for inadequate federal funding, but this is likely to become the new normal if Congress insists on cutting federal spending instead of raising taxes, which are now at the lowest level since the early 1950s.

It was just a year ago that Congress and the Obama administration extended the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers, producing a $190 million windfall this year and a like amount next year for the top 5 percent of Vermonters. Evidently afraid to ask the top 5 percent across the country to pay a little more, Congress chose instead to force poor and elderly Vermonters to shiver in the cold this winter.

The additional state funding will make a difference, and Vermont simply can’t allow people to freeze, but it’s not like the state didn’t have other budget gaps to fill.