Home Heating Assistance Amendment Blocked in Senate
WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 — Senate Republicans this week blocked an effort to increase funding for home heating assistance.
GOP senators used a procedural move to prevent a vote on an amendment to a defense spending on Wednesday night. The amendment would have increased funding for low income energy assistance from the $2.183 billion currently appropriated for 2006 to the maximum $5.1 billion that can be spent.
“Basically, this was the Republican leadership blocking a very good amendment to get funding for these families,” said Amy Brundage, press secretary to Sen. John Kerry, who sponsored the amendment.
“If we’ve learned anything from the past months it’s that we need to prepare for trouble ahead,” said Kerry in a press release Thursday morning. “With the defeat of this amendment, we remain unprepared for what may be a long, cold and expensive winter for millions of American families.”
The Kerry amendment “didn’t have a prayer,” said Elliot Jacobson, the head of the energy assistance program at Action Inc., a Gloucester distributor of federal heating assistance funds for the Cape Ann area.
Jacobson said that he is keeping an eye, instead, on a bill in the state legislature that would provide an additional $20 million in state money for home heating assistance.
“We want to put language in the bill that forces the state to raise the benefit level proportionally,” said Jacobson.
Raising the state benefit level would allow each household that qualifies for heating assistance to receive more. Right now, according to Jacobson, the level of assistance from federal and state funds is only enough to buy one tank of heating oil.
“Most people need three or four [tanks] to get through the winter,” he said.
The state bill also would allow only $5 million of the funds to be released at the beginning of the heating season, according to Jacobson. “We’re trying to correct the language of the legislature to get the full authorization up front,” he said.
Stat box:
By the Numbers
Residential Heating Prices
Oil
$1.83 — Average price per gallon last winter in northeast.
$2.42 — Projected price per gallon this winter in the northeast.
$2.57 — Current average price of heating oil in Mass.
Natural Gas
$14.36 — Average price per thousand cubic feet last winter in New England
$20.64 — Projected price per thousand cubic feet this winter in New England.
Source: Energy Information Administration
