Posted on 03/08/2006 10:21:17 AM PST by newgeezer
WASHINGTON -- The Senate has agreed to put an additional $1 billion this year into a program to help poor people with energy costs, but only after overcoming resistance from warm state senators who said those suffering from summer heat weren't getting their fair share.
The additional spending would increase to $3.1 billion the amount the federal government will have this year for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, a decades-old program that subsidizes heating and cooling costs for poor families.
The legislation, which still must be considered by the House, passed by a voice vote Tuesday, but only after a lengthy debate between northern state senators, who said rising heating costs were creating a crisis in their states, and lawmakers from warmer states who claimed they were being shortchanged.
Sen. Olympia Snowe, D-Maine, sponsor of the legislation, said people in her state were going without food to pay for heating or, in more dire cases, being hospitalized with hypothermia. "Come to Maine and tell us about it being a mild winter," she said.
Snowe's original bill would have distributed $250 million under an existing formula that she said would mainly benefit warm-weather states. The remaining $750 million would have been labeled contingency funding and disbursed at the discretion of the president. The money was shifted from $1 billion that had been set aside for fiscal 2007.
But that wasn't acceptable to several of her Republican colleagues from the South and Southwest, who said that division would only exacerbate the program's traditional slant toward heating rather than cooling assistance.
Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said LIHEAP spending tends to be front-ended, with the money being used up in the winter months so nothing is left when the temperatures in Arizona climb over 100 degrees. He said the Arizona LIHEAP program reaches only 4 percent of those eligible for assistance.
Kyl said all the money should be decided by formula so that all states were guaranteed a fair share.
"We don't deny there is a need," said Rep. John Ensign, R-Nev. But "is it fair across the country or does it benefit some states and not other states?"
Snowe finally offered a compromise under which 50 percent of the new money would be distributed according to the existing formula, and the other 50 percent be considered emergency spending. That proposal was approved 68-31.
"We're denying the president the ability to respond to an emergency," she said of the Kyl proposal. "States are going to receive funding when there is no emergency?" she added. "How does that make sense?"
Congress authorized $5.1 billion for home energy aid as part of an energy bill passed last summer, but budgetary constraints pushed the final figure for fiscal 2006 down to $2.1 billion, largely unchanged from the $2 billion level that has held steady in recent years.
Last week Snowe successfully overcame opposition from conservative Republicans, led by Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who tried to kill the bill on the grounds that the spending was not offset by cuts in other programs.
Federal assistance for home energy costs, dating back to the oil crisis of the 1970s, now reaches some 5 million families. Proponents of expanding the program say the $2 billion budget doesn't go very far when there are some 33 million households, spending about $55 billion a year in energy costs, eligible for the program.
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Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/liheap/
There you go!!!!! thanks
yeah and then the damned Dems and the liberal Republicans will backload military spending bills with all this other crap.
It WILL happen. hell it HAS happened.
"going without food to pay for heating or, in more dire cases, being hospitalized with hypothermia."
I sure hope Global Warming gets here soon.
Too bad the constitution did not make it explicitly clear. Our founding fathers never dreamed that the Federal Government would have such power.
dry up... or implode in a catastrophic paragon of socialist economics. ;-)
The Constitution did make it explicitly clear. The Party members have chosen to ignore it and have selected Supreme Court judges who will affirm their positions.
The Constitution provides explicit authority to the fedgov. It can only do those things specifically stated. The means for implenting the tasks are t.b.d. but the scope of the authority is not fuzzy at all.
It is a pure, unadulterated lie if anybody tries to tell you that the words "...to promote the general welfare..." assign any authority to the fedgov beyond what is explicitly stated,
Those words are in the PRE-AMBLE, which is an introduction to the list of responsibilities that follow.
It states "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
"do ordain and establish this constitution". The rest of the Constitution defines what authority it has, not the introduction.
Politicians have been taking advantage of the illiteracy of the American people for decades now, in this regard.
They're not. You are. They just happen to be the involuntary transfer agency
Next election cycle, and every one after that, you can blow it out your asses.
So do the people want freedom or handouts, because you can't have both. Freedom means you take care of these things yourself.
I'm taking a Constitutional Law class, and this makes me so mad! What the hell happened to actually reading the General Welfare clause? Has any public official even looked at the Constitution?
C'mon Mike! Bush has a veto vote and he does not cast it! He does not have a vote in the Senate, but he does have a veto vote at the Oval Office that he chooses not to cast.
This is a 48% Increase in Welfare when inflation is running less than 4%.
There are RAT liberals and there are Republican liberals and socialists. Face the facts--the Republicans do not represent conservatives any longer.
What we true conservatives here need to do is to show outrage at their socialism. Those of you who continue to defend their RAT-like behavior is only slopping the hogs and you are helping to support their socialistic behavior.
And the funny thing is, the Compost still has it wrong (or is it right; I never know with RepublicRATs)
And I will bet you the Rhino Prez has no compunctions on signing this either if he gets it...
Every law from Congress that grants any benefit to any single citizen should apply to all other citizens equally. That would fix this nonsense PDQ.
I sure hope the House kills this.
All you can do anymore is shake your head in disgust and tell yourself, "Okay, as long as the scumbags DO NOT consider ever raising my taxes again."
Meanwhile, the scumbags BETTER make the original Bush tax cuts permanent.
By the way, I am about sick up to here with supporting friggin' "poor people".
My hands are full enough supporting my own family, thank you.
John Kennedy was more conservative that Bush and all of today's Republican weasels.
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