Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program is worth funding

Last winter, more than 600,000 households in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey and the District of Columbia relied on the Low‑Income Home Energy Assistance Program to keep the lights on and the pipes from freezing. Yet the latest federal budget proposes zeroing‑out the program entirely, echoing the current administration’s April plan to lower taxes by eliminating all $4 billion in LIHEAP funds. In the meantime, there have been mass firings at the Department of Health and Human Services, including all staff of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

Cutting the nation’s primary safety net for utility bills would have devastating impacts here in the Mid‑Atlantic, where old housing stock meets wetter, hotter summers and volatile gas prices. My own research with Carnegie Mellon colleagues tracked 1,351 LIHEAP‑eligible households served by a regional utility and found the grant does exactly what policy intends: it frees families to use the energy they need. After assistance arrived, electrically heated homes used an average 37 kilowatt‑hours more per month, while gas‑heated homes burned the equivalent of 0.30 MMBtu more per month. This amount of energy is enough to run a space heater nearly an hour a day at safe temperatures.

But timing matters. When grants were delayed until January, energy use climbed; when money came before Christmas, many families actually reduced consumption, a sign of energy‑limiting behavior that can push indoor temperatures to dangerous lows. The lesson is that LIHEAP provides homes with the capabilities to heat their homes and predictable, fully funded allocations can let administrators move aid to the times when it would be most effective.

The Mid‑Atlantic’s utilities understand this. Last year, for example, Duquesne Light and Delmarva Power expanded arrearage‑relief alongside LIHEAP: Duquesne Light’s income‑based customer assistance program includes debt forgiveness for on‑time payments, and Delmarva’s Arrearage Management Program can forgive up to $6,000 per household. Delmarva also connected 22,000 customers to $35 million in energy assistance, including $15.5 million from LIHEAP, and partnered with the State of Delaware on a $6.5 million bill‑credit fund. Partnerships like these depend on the federal seed money now on the chopping block.

Opponents call LIHEAP wasteful, yet the program already reaches only one in five eligible households and is audited every year. What is wasteful is sending vulnerable residents to emergency rooms with weather-related health problems or letting delinquent accounts pile up until ratepayers eventually shoulder the cost. Senate appropriators recognized as much July 31, voting to increase LIHEAP to $4 billion and rebuke the proposed cut. The House should do the same when it takes up the bill this fall.

For Mid‑Atlantic lawmakers of both parties, the choice is clear. Either preserve a program that protects public health, stabilizes utility revenue and, as our data indicates, allows families to use energy safely and efficiently, or watch a preventable crisis unfold each time the weather shifts toward the extremes. LIHEAP is not charity; it is a foundation for affordable bills.