Category: Fall 2008 Newswire
Connecticut to Get Additional $6.9 Million in LIHEAP Funds
FUNDS
Norwalk Hour
Jordan Zappala
Boston University Washington News Service
9/17/08
WASHINGTON – President George Bush released nearly $121 million in emergency funds Wednesday, including $6.9 million to Connecticut, to help pay the heating bills of low-income people
The money comes from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program to provide heating assistance to eligible households during the coming winter months.
Heating or cooling programs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia will receive $96 million, and an additional $25 million will go specifically to New England and Alaska.
“Low-income families in Connecticut received little more than $500 last winter to help with heating bills that could be as high as four times that amount this year,” Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) said in a press release Wednesday. “This $7 million in additional heating assistance will go a long way toward helping Connecticut’s low-income households heat their homes this coming winter.”
Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) echoed his colleague’s sentiment.
“The release of additional funding [for the heating aid program] is excellent news for Connecticut,” he said. “While this increase in funding is much needed and welcome, I will continue to work with the Connecticut delegation and Gov. [M. Jodi] Rell to increase funding by at least $2.5 billion.”
These annual federal funds are divided into a basic grant, through which Connecticut has received nearly $41 million in each of fiscal years 2007 and 2008, and contingency funds – those the President can release if needed.
In 2007, no contingency funds went to Connecticut. But this fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, Connecticut has received close to $25 million in such aid – highlighting both the weak economy and the high cost of heating and cooling.
More than 86,000 Connecticut households received assistance under the program in 2007. This year, that number is expected to exceed 90,000, with applications coming from more than 100,000 households, according to Gov. Rell’s office.
Home heating oil prices in New England are expected to rise this winter by an average of nearly $2 a gallon over last year, members of Congress from New England wrote in a letter to Bush last week. Thirty percent of U.S. households that use home heating oil are located in the six New England states.
Last month, Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) introduced the Home Heating Oil Assistance Act, which would allow for a refundable tax credit of up to $500 in an effort to provide additional assistance to New England middle- and lower-income families.
Personal appeals asking the President to release the funds were made by Dodd and Lieberman, Gov. Rell and the 22 New England House members, including Shays.
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N.H. Democrats Back Measure to Allow Offshore Drilling
DRILLING
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jenny Paul
Boston University Washington News Service
September 16, 2008
WASHINGTON – New Hampshire’s Democratic representatives voiced support Tuesday for an energy bill that would allow oil and natural gas drilling in some coastal waters but would prohibit development of Georges Bank, New England’s prime fishing ground.
Reps. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.) and Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.) followed other House Democrats and backed the measure, which could open waters more than 50 miles from shore to drilling. Each state would have control over drilling that occurs between 50 and 100 miles off its coastline, while the federal government would control waters beyond 100 miles.
When President Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore drilling in July, both representatives condemned the action as shortsighted. Hodes said he supports the House bill because it offers a comprehensive energy strategy that doesn’t focus solely on drilling.
“We have expanded offshore drilling, we have support for renewable and alternative energies, we are finally shifting this country’s energy policy in a comprehensive way,” Hodes said. “I’m willing to make this compromise. I think it’s what the American people have been calling for.”
The measure would require utility companies to use renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, to produce 15 percent of their annual electricity supply by 2020. It would not allow states to share in the revenues from increased drilling. Instead, the money would be used to research and promote clean renewable energy.
“We are interested in fiscal responsibility, and fiscal responsibility and pay-as-you-go require that we direct the funding to national priorities,” Hodes said.
But many Republicans, including Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) and Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.), denounced the bill as a bait-and-switch tactic because it doesn’t allow the states to take part in the proceeds from increased offshore drilling. Gregg said the absence of revenue sharing “basically guarantees the difference whether or not the drilling will be pursued.”
“This bill was not written for the purposes of drilling offshore,” Gregg said. “This bill was written for the purpose of protecting people politically.”
A congressional moratorium on offshore drilling that has been in effect since 1981 expires Sept. 30. Because Bush already lifted the executive ban on drilling, without a new bill, the federal government could allow drilling as close as three miles offshore, Shea-Porter said.
“I’m supporting it because it’s the best compromise that can come out, and it’s actually a fair one because what it will do is allow more drilling, but it will allow states to opt in,” she said, dismissing the contention that states wouldn’t agree to offshore drilling without revenue sharing. “States know that if they have this, they too will have jobs.”
Sununu is backing an energy proposal being developed by a bipartisan coalition in the Senate that would allow drilling across the Gulf of Mexico and off the coasts of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Under the proposal, states would be able to share in the revenue generated. The proposal also would provide tax credits for renewable energy and promote the use of nuclear power, according to a Sununu press release.
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House Energy Bill Proposes Off-Shore Drilling
ENERGY
Norwalk Hour
Jordan Zappala
Boston University Washington News Service
9/16/08
WASHINGTON – Rep. Christopher Shays (R-4th) spoke out against a Democratic-sponsored energy bill Tuesday, saying the Democratic leadership had rejected his and other efforts at compromise.
A day earlier, Democrats had introduced the bill as a compromise while simultaneously insisting that the measure be voted on without amendment.
Shays on Monday night had offered five amendments that would have included a refundable credit for home energy costs and required electric power companies to get more of their energy from renewable resources.
“These amendments would have markedly improved this bill,” Shays said in a press release. “There is nothing in this legislation to provide relief to consumers for home heating costs this winter or to address speculation in the energy futures market.”
The bill would put an end to a decades-old ban on off-shore drilling, which would be a major shift in policy for the Democratic leadership.
The legislation, described on the Web site of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as a “responsible compromise on drilling,” would give states the option to allow drilling between 50 and 100 miles off-shore on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, excepting the Eastern Gulf of Mexico and New England’s Georges Bank, which supports the most valuable fishery in America. Beyond 100 miles, the waters could be leased directly from the federal government.
The bill also would extend tax incentives for renewable energy and energy-efficient buildings, but many Republicans complain that the lack of revenue sharing would give states zero incentive to allow drilling off their shores.
On the floor Tuesday morning, obviously upset Republicans protested the short amount of time they had to digest the nearly 300-page bill, as well as the bill’s closed rule status, which allows for no amendments – a move intended to avoid anticipated Republican attempts to bring the drilling much closer to shore.
Shays also expressed his disapproval of the Democratic handling of the bill.
“It seems to me we should be having an open and honest debate on the energy issue,” he said. “It is unfortunate the majority did not allow more meaningful dialogue on how we can work together on a bipartisan basis to address our looming energy crisis.”
The legislation – the Comprehensive American Energy Security and Consumer Protection Act – comes after nearly five weeks of Republican protest on the House floor over the August adjournment without allowing a vote on the GOP’s own energy bill. Shays participated in the protest on Aug. 6.
“At a time when energy costs are so high, Congress should be working overtime to reduce demand, increase supply and address speculation in the oil futures market,” Shays said.
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Dodd Pushes for Energy Assistance Program to be Fully Funded
LIHEAP
Norwalk Hour
Erin Kutz
Boston University Washington News Service
March 5, 2008
WASHINGTON – When Hartford resident Robin Hussain left her job to care for her grandchildren full-time, she quickly learned that federal energy assistance, not savvy shopping, would help her make ends meet.
“Your heating cost is the toughest thing to manage in your entire household budget,” she said. “There are many expenses that you can bring down. You can shop more carefully for groceries and you can clip coupons or switch to another market. You can get used clothes. You can find a more affordable apartment. But you don’t have a choice when it comes to heating that apartment.”
This year, Hussain is receiving $675 toward paying her heating and hot water bill, from the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, she said Wednesday at a hearing held by the Children and Families Subcommittee of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn). Hussain is also on a plan in which the gas company fully matches her $80 monthly payments, she said.
Dodd is one of many legislators advocating that the fiscal 2009 budget contain the $5.1 billion required to fully fund the federal heating assistance program and help more households like Hussain’s. President Bush’s budget requested only $2 billion for the program, down from $2.57 billion for this year. Fully funding the energy assistance program would cost roughly half as much as a month in the Iraq War, Dodd said.
This year, close to 19,000 Connecticut households ran out of their basic heating assistance money by mid January– almost twice as many as last year, Dodd pointed out.
Last year, 211 families ran out of the extra, emergency assistance they are forced to rely on when the basic funding runs out. This year, more than ten times as many — 2,981 — have exhausted that emergency heating assistance.
Rising fuel prices, growing unemployment and the sub-prime loan crisis make expanding the heating assistance program, also known as LIHEAP, even more pressing, said. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).
“It seems to me that LIHEAP recipients are in the middle of a perfect storm,” he said. “The explosion in costs for oil has just been something just so dramatic and so out of step with people on fixed incomes.”
When some legislators pushed for heating assistance in the economic stimulus plan Congress approved last month, they were assailed by some as trying to score political points. Dodd said heating assistance “is not just a heating and cooling program—it is a homeownership program, a nutrition program and certainly a health program.”
Dr. Deborah Frank, a pediatrics professor at the Boston University School of Medicine, urged the senators to expand heating assistance from a child health and developmental standpoint, noting that babies will freeze to death before they will starve to death.
Children in families who spend grocery money on heating bills suffer from malnutrition, she added. She also pointed to two siblings in Boston who died in a fire started by their family’s space heater, which many struggling households use to lower oil expenses.
Frank also said that children whose families are eligible for heating assistance but do not receive it are 23 percent more likely to have poor physical growth and 32 percent more likely to be admitted to the hospital than their peers in families receiving heating assistance.
She looked to the subcommittee to help alleviate these ills.
“There is a medicine that is partially effective in protecting children from the current epidemic of energy insecurity and its costly consequences, not just in human suffering, but in medical and educational costs now and in the future,” Frank said. “That medicine is public energy assistance.”
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