UPDATE. This just in from Peter Welch's office:
Thursday, 10 February 2011 17:06
The Vermont congressional delegation - Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) - will hold a press conference in Burlington on Monday when President Obama will send Congress a budget which reportedly will propose to cut in half federal funding for home heating assistance.
The delegation led an effort in Congress that doubled funding for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program to $5.1 billion a year since 2008. The program provides critical heating assistance for senior citizens, persons with disabilities, and low-income families with children. In December, the Vermont delegation also successfully fought efforts in Congress to cut LIHEAP.
http://www.welch.house.gov/ind...
UPDATE: Bernie Sanders was on Vermont Edition today and in a response to a question from GMD, confirmed that the Vermont delegation will be fighting to maintain support for Fuel Assistance.
You can hear the broadcast at 7:00 p.m., or listen to it here:
http://vpr.net/episode/50484/
Interesting juxtaposition today.
First, the Shriver Center on Poverty Law (what used to be called Clearinghouse, and which publishes Clearinghouse Review, the indispensable journal of poverty law, published its Poverty Scorecard.
Vermont's delegation did pretty well: A's across the board. Not A+, but A is pretty good.
http://povertyscorecard.org/st...
Obama, on the other hand, not so much.
As reported in the National Journal:
President Obama's proposed 2012 budget will cut several billion dollars from the government's energy assistance fund for poor people, officials briefed on the subject told National Journal.
It's the biggest domestic spending cut disclosed so far, and one that will likely generate the most heat from the president's traditional political allies. Such complaints might satisfy the White House, which has a vested interest in convincing Americans that it is serious about budget discipline.
http://www.nationaljournal.com...
That's more than ten times what the Republicans want to cut the program, and their cuts would come out of the no less vital contingency fund.
Members of Congress from the Northeast are already calling for full funding of the program, and demanding that the administration retract the proposed cuts.
We can expect our delegation to come out strong in support of LIHEAP. They're all good on poverty, and Senator Leahy visited at least one meeting of the state's Fuel Program Advisory Committee while I was a member. I've seen speculation that this is no more than political kabuki to boost the administration's budget-cutting cred, but still, cut vital heating assistance to low-income families?
Obama, WTF? |
