Category: Heidi Taylor
New England Fishermen to See Federal Funds in Form of Boat/Permit Buyback Program
By Heidi Taylor
WASHINGTON—Beleaguered fishermen may see some relief under a program that would offer them financial incentives to quit the fishing business. Sens. Edward Kennedy and John Kerry slipped a voluntary “buyback” provision into the massive spending bill Congress passed last week that could funnel more than $10 million to New England fishermen. President Bush was expected to sign the $397.4 billion omnibus bill.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) would be in charge of distributing the funds for this voluntary program that would allow permit holders to submit bids to sell their boats and permits to the federal government and leave the industry. In the reverse auction, permits and boats would be purchased, starting with the lowest bid, until funds were gone. The boats would be scrapped.
Kennedy and Kerry, both Massachusetts Democrats, said the buyback program would give struggling fishermen the option of getting out of fishing, an industry governed by tight regulation and plagued by depleted resources.
“Today’s announcement will provide immediate relief for hundreds of fishermen and help them transition into other trades that better stabilize the economic needs of their families,” Kennedy said in a statement last week. There are 1,800 groundfishing permits in New England, 810 of them in Massachusetts, according to Kennedy.
Currently, many worry that the ocean does not hold enough groundfish such as cod, haddock, redfish and flounder to support the many fishermen in the Northeast.
“We are faced with unprecedented low stocks of groundfish species and an industry shrinking in regional importance, struggling to support historical fishing communities such as Gloucester and New Bedford, Massachusetts,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website said.
Dan Morris, special assistant to the northeastern regional administrator at NMFS, who helped with a permit buyback last year, said that the office received 501 bids from fishermen interested in selling their permits. In last year’s program, 245 permits were bought at an average price of around $40,000 a piece.
But this year’s buyback program isn’t the same thing, Morris said. “Everybody has a different idea about how the program should work, and with this boat and permit buyback, it’s a different set of issues,” Morris said.
“A buyback is a very complex issue,” Morris said, adding that if $10 million were appropriated for a buyback, there would be many factors to consider. For example, a decision would have to be made about which boats get priority in the buyback-working boats that are taking a lot of fish out of the ocean or boats that are not working or employing fishers; big trawlers with equipment to bring in many fish or gill netters with smaller capacity.
Besides working with Congress on this program, Morris said, “we need to make sure to meet the intent and desires of the public.”
Although there is no clear way to anticipate participation, after more than a decade of extremely tight restrictions because of overfishing and depleted stocks the buyback option may sound good to many fishermen, Patricia Fiorelli, a spokeswoman for the New England Fishery Management Council, said in a phone interview. At least “for those who are ready to retire,” she added.
“We are absolutely happy with anything that will help fishermen,” Fiorelli said, adding, “Groundfish is an overcapitalized fishery with too many boats and not enough resources.” But she said she could not confirm that this money is enough to make a dent in the problems that fishermen face.
Kennedy and Kerry said in their press release that many fishermen would privately agree that there are too many fishermen in groundfishery. Reducing the capacity of the fleet in New England would help fishing-a 400-year-old New England industry-as well as struggling fishing families, they say.
“While New England fisheries are slowly recovering after years of substantial restrictions, the $10 million included for a voluntary buyout program for New England fishing boats will allow some fishermen to retire with dignity,” Kerry said.
Published in The Newburyport Daily News, The Gloucester Daily News, and The Salem News in Massachusetts.
House Passes Republican Welfare Reform Bill – Dems Offer Strong Opposition
By Heidi Taylor
WASHINGTON—A Republican welfare plan that the House approved last week would cost Massachusetts at least $222 million in added costs over the next five years, according to Rep. John Tierney, D-Salem.
The bill would require that welfare recipients work more hours and spend less time in educational and vocational training programs and would limit lifetime welfare eligibility to five years . Democrats offered two alternative bills, both of which were defeated.
House Republicans said that their proposal to reauthorize and refocus a landmark 1996 welfare law would help Americans to be self-reliant by sending them to work, but congressional Democrats decried the bill as one that would take people off welfare but not out of poverty and make welfare parents choose between two unacceptable options.
"We cannot be forcing parents to choose between leaving their children home alone and working to put food on the table or staying home with their children who are hungry," Tierney said on the House floor last week.
Under the House bill, Democrats charged, welfare recipients would be required to work more hours at jobs where they are making minimum wage instead of spending their time in training programs that could make them competitive for higher-paying jobs. Democrats also argued that the bill's new requirements would impose additional childcare costs without authorizing the funds to meet all those costs.
The Republican bill would require recipients to work at least 24 hours per week and up to 16 additional hours in productive activities such as education, for a total of 40 hours a week. Previous requirements totaled only 30 hours a week.
House Democrats said that according to the Congressional Budget Office, the extra hours during which parents, often single mothers, would have to put their children in childcare would add as much as $11 billion in costs to states over the next five years. But the bill would increase childcare funding by only $2 billion, Democrats said.
With the weak economy, Tierney said, almost 50,000 families in Massachusetts would be affected by the bill's tough new requirements.
"The House bill blocks steps that have proven to be effective in moving people from welfare to work," Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a statement this week, adding, "It offers little more than dead-end, low-wage jobs with no hope for advancement."
The Democratic alternatives would have increased money for childcare, allowed more education and training time for welfare recipients and restored welfare benefits to illegal immigrants.
The House bill would provide $300 million a year for marriage promotion programs and $50 million a year for sexual abstinence programs. It also would ban any discussion of contraception under those programs.
In a speech last week during which he urged the Senate to pass a similar bill, President Bush endorsed the bill's measures. "The House of Representatives… stayed with us on the reauthorization bill, which supports stronger work requirements," he said, adding, "It is important to understand that a more hopeful society is one in which we have strong marriages and families."
On abstinence programs, Bush said, "In order to help people help themselves, I strongly believe that we must encourage teen abstinence programs" that would curb teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
It is unclear whether the Senate will pass a similar bill. Last year, the House passed a nearly identical reauthorization, supported by the Bush administration, but the Senate failed to approve a welfare bill.
"It has no workplace or civil rights protections, and it doesn't deserve to be enacted," Kennedy said of the new House bill, adding, "I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate to enact real reforms that will genuinely help families escape poverty and achieve self-sufficiency."
Published in The Newburyport Daily News, The Gloucester Daily News, and The Salem News in Massachusetts.
Coast Guard Faces Transition, Changes But Pledges to Remain Semper Paratus – “Always Ready”
By Heidi Taylor
WASHINGTON—By March 1, the U.S. Coast Guard will have made its transition into the new Department of Homeland Security, an agency whose prime mission is to protect the United States from terrorist attacks. But many authorities—including some in the North Shore area-- worry that this shift of focus will take away from some of the Coast Guard’s established missions.
“One of the concerns I had about the reconfiguration from the beginning was that even their core missions would not be receiving enough funding,” Rep. John Tierney, D-Salem, said in an interview Thursday. He added that traditional responsibilities such as water safety, search and rescue, fishing, and open waterways could be neglected in a financial crunch.
For local residents, some of the traditional missions like search and rescue are crucial. Just this week, the Gloucester Coast Guard was called to make a rescue attempt in the waters off Cape Ann after receiving a report of a diver in distress. A Coast Guard rescue boat from Gloucester and a rescue helicopter from the Cape Cod air station were sent to the diver’s aid, but the diver was announced dead on arrival at Addison Gilbert Hospital.
Adm. Thomas Collins, commandant of the Coast Guard, warned at a hearing held by the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, and Fisheries that “the Coast Guard is shouldering a tremendous responsibility” with its new homeland security role and its new duties to protect the ports, coastal shorelines and citizens as well as its traditional duties.
But he stressed that the Coast Guard has always been a multi-mission organization and that such duties as search and rescue, drug and migrant interdiction, marine environment protection and fisheries management would not be neglected.
“We must be able to balance the rigors of homeland security with the demands of other crucial missions,” he said, adding that the increase in the president’s fiscal year 2004 budget for the Coast Guard would be a big help.
In addition to the financial woes the Coast Guard may face, JayEtta Hecker, director of the General Accounting Office’s physical infrastructure team, said that a GAO study published in January found the overall process of creating the Department of Homeland Security, in which 22 agencies will be consolidated, to be high risk.
The Coast Guard, she said, “must still do the work it has been doing for years in such areas as fisheries management and search and rescue, but now its resources are deployed as well in homeland security and even in the military buildup in the Middle East.”
“We’re asking you to do more with less,” Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, who chairs the subcommittee, said to Collins at the hearing. Snowe expressed concerns about what she called “gaping holes” along the country’s coasts. She warned that with threat levels heightened, the Coast Guard must make constant vigilance the norm.
The biggest challenge the Coast Guard faces right now, according to Hecker, is balancing all its important missions, new and old, as it merges into the new department and hires a huge number—over 4,000—of new personnel.
“The Coast Guard has a solid record…but start-up problems are real,” Hecker said, adding that the GAO has identified such things as communication and partnership-building, strategic planning and performance management as key factors for a successful transition.
Published in The Newburyport Daily News, The Gloucester Daily News, and The Salem News in Massachusetts.
State Legislators and Activists Urge a Ban on Use of Landmines in Possible War
By Heidi Taylor
WASHINGTON—The more than 135,000 American servicemen amassed in the Middle East are not alone. With them is a stockpile of over 90,000 U.S. landmines (and counting) in countries like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait that ring Iraq, Pentagon records show.
Last week, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Worcester, and several other congressmen wrote a letter to President Bush urging him to ban the use of these weapons in the possible war on Iraq, citing among other things, that almost every other member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) already has banned the use of these weapons.
“New US antipersonnel mines, on top of the hundreds of thousands of mines already in the ground in Iraq from the Iran-Iraq and Persian Gulf wars, would pose serious dangers to innocent civilians, our own troops and future peacekeepers involved with post-conflict reconstruction,” they stated in the letter.
Sunny Robinson, of the North Shore Coalition for Peace and Justice, was more specific. “Landmines go on waging war after war is over,” she said, adding that there is a lesson to be learned from Afghanistan, where now hundreds of thousands of “ordinary people… have had their hands, legs, arms, feet blown off.”
Gina Coplon-Newfield, coordinator of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines--an organization within the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights, co-recipients of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize--said that the dangers posed by landmines, even so-called smart or self-destructing mines, far outweigh their benefits.
“Not only are they a threat to opposing troops but also to civilians and our own troops,” she said, adding that calling the self-destructing landmines “smart” is misleading because in reality they are indiscriminate in whom they maim and kill. They could be set to self-destruct after a number of days as a precaution, but a group of refugees or displaced persons fleeing war could walk right into a literally ticking bomb, Coplon-Newfield said.
She added that the diplomatic consequences of using mines would also be great because even the United States’ closest ally, the United Kingdom, has signed a 1997 treaty that prohibits the use of any type of mine, either antitank or antipersonnel, in warfare.
Although the United States didn’t sign the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty (signed by 146 other countries), then-President Clinton signed Presidential Decision Directive 64 in 1998 ordering that U.S. forces discontinue the use of mines by 2003 everywhere except Korea, and that the United States move toward signing the Mine Ban Treaty by 2006.
Bush, however, called for a formal review of this policy in the summer of 2001. And in December 2001, the Department of Defense recommended that the administration abandon steps toward banning the use of landmines. For now, however, Bush has neither dropped nor reaffirmed 1998 presidential directive.
The last time that the United States used landmines was in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and, according to a study published last September by the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, mines caused 81 U.S. casualties during that war. Those deaths accounted for 6 percent of all U.S. troop casualties in that conflict, according to the report.
The benefits of using landmines, as stated in U.S. landmine doctrine, range from adding temporary offensive strength to disrupting or disorganizing enemy attacks and enemy lines of communication, according to the GAO study. Proponents also defend the use of landmines as a cheap and effective defense mechanism for guarding borders, tanks and troops.
But the GAO report also indicated dangers and concerns about the use of landmines as identified in Department of Defense lesson-learned reports, which include the loss of battlefield mobility and the fear of casualties caused by friendly fire.
Just last month, an American serviceman was severely injured after stepping on an antipersonnel landmine of unknown origin during a routine patrol in Afghanistan, according to a report by the Army News Service. The Pentagon says U.S. forces planted no mines in Afghanistan.
“Both non-self-destructing or self-deactivating (“dumb”) and self-destructing and self-deactivating (“smart”) antipersonnel landmines cannot distinguish between the foot of a soldier and that of a child, between friend and foe,” McGovern and others said in the letter to Bush. “The United States military, unquestionably the strongest in the world, can defend itself and its interests without the aid of this indiscriminate menace.”
According to the United Nations, every year almost 20,000 people are maimed or killed by landmines. Of those, 80 percent are civilians and one-third are children.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
Published in The Newburyport Daily News, The Gloucester Daily News, and The Salem News in Massachusetts.
Kennedy and Others Introduce Legislation to Protect Therapeutic Cloning
By Heidi Taylor
WASHINGTON—In the Capitol, battling legislators were holding back-to-back press conferences Wednesday arguing about whether cloning to produce stem cells for biomedical research should be outlawed. In Gloucester, meanwhile, Guntis Licis, who suffers from Type I diabetes, was giving himself three shots and had to prick himself six other times to test his blood sugar levels.
“I’m a walking pin cushion,” he joked in a phone interview. But on a more serious note, he added that he’s been undergoing this regimen of shots and pricks every single day for 28 years now and is still not used to it.
Licis’s interest in stem cell research is more than just personal. As executive director of SeniorCare Inc., in Gloucester, he said that he sees the effects that Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia have on his patients and their families. He added that the idea of outlawing the cloning that makes embryonic stem cell research possible is inexcusable because he is positive that a cure could be found for his disease and many others.
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), and many other legislators and interested groups agree. On Wednesday, Kennedy and others introduced a bipartisan bill that would ban reproductive cloning but, more importantly, would protect and regulate therapeutic cloning—the type of cloning that would allow the use of embryonic stem cells for biomedical research.
According to Kennedy, at least 128 million Americans who suffer from debilitating and as yet incurable diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, heart disease, spinal cord injury and Parkinson’s disease stand to benefit.
“We must not let misguided fears of today deny patients the cures of tomorrow,” Kennedy said in a statement released at a press conference. “Using cloning to reproduce a child is improper and immoral—and our legislation will make it illegal. But it does so in such a way that allows research to continue as we seek cures for our most feared diseases,” he added.
He and other sponsors, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), defended somatic cell nuclear transplantation, the process used to produce embryonic stem cells, as holding the potential to save or improve millions of lives and tried to distance it from cloning for reproductive purposes--as in the case of Dolly the sheep or the questionable assertions of the Raelian group that it cloned several human being late last year.
However, critics, who also held a press conference Wednesday, said they don’t see a difference between therapeutic and reproductive cloning. Kennedy’s Human Cloning Ban and Stem Cell Research Protection Act of 2003 stands in opposition to another bill, S.245, sponsored by Sens. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA), that proposes to outlaw any type of cloning
“All cloning is reproductive,” Brownback said in a statement Wednesday. Critics of therapeutic cloning, including anti-abortion groups, contend that it always involves a human embryo that would have, under the right circumstances, eventually developed into a human being.
But Kennedy and his supporters argue that there is a difference. Stem cell research, they say, would be allowed only on unfertilized eggs that were never implanted into a womb and could not be conducted after 14 days, the point at which cells begin to divide. The benefit of using an embryonic stem cell is that it can be influenced to turn into any type of cell from skin to heart, whereas an adult stem cell cannot.
Supporters of therapeutic cloning are wide-ranging. Former first lady Nancy Reagan wrote a letter in support of Kennedy’s bill, discussing the suffering both her husband, former President Ronald Reagan, who has Alzheimer’s disease, and their family would be spared were there a cure for the disease.
“I am determined to do what I can to save other families from this pain,”she wrote in a letter to Hatch..”There are so many diseases that can be cured, or at least helped, that we can’t turn our back on this.”
Christopher Reeve, actor Kevin Kline, former president Jimmy Carter, the American Association for Cancer Research, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International and many other individuals and groups also expressed their support for Kennedy’s legislation. All said they look forward to a future in which people could be saved the suffering they now endure because of their debilitating conditions.
Licis said that while SeniorCare Inc. has no official position on the question of stem cell research, he is a strong advocate.
“This would be a great help to many older people who are suffering,” he said, because the quality of life for them and their families would be improved. He also said the financial benefits of finding possible cures for debilitating diseases would extend throughout society.
Whether Kennedy and the other sponsors of this bill have the 60 votes needed to beat a filibuster in the Senate is uncertain. But according to Congressional Quarterly, a House bill,, H.R. 234, which would ban all types of human cloning, could be passed within months.
Published in The Newburyport Daily News, The Gloucester Daily News, and The Salem News in Massachusetts.
Many Worry as Head Start Heads to Congressional Reauthorization
By Heidi Taylor
WASHINGTON—Dressed in their finest, children representing Washington, D.C.’s local Head Start program sang to a packed room in the Russell Senate Office Building at the Capitol, “1, 2, 3…all my friends are here with me,” in both English and Spanish. The audience, filled with proud parents and several members of Congress, gave a standing ovation at the end of the performance.
The eclectic group of children, teachers, parents and lawmakers met this week for a rally organized by the National Head Start Association (NHSA) in order to discuss the future of Head Start, a government program designed to help low-income children and their families through the important stages of early childhood development. The program is facing congressional reauthorization this year.
Many Head Start supporters worry that the program will be changed for the worse under several Bush administration proposals, which include transferring the Head Start program from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the Department of Education.
Budget issues also have many in the Head Start community on edge as the House begins to review the Senate omnibus appropriations bill that encompasses federal programs not yet approved for the remainder of fiscal year 2003, and Bush prepares his fiscal 2004 budget to be sent to Congress Monday.
Participants in Wednesday’s rally said they favor keeping Head Start in HHS; avoiding block granting, which would make the program state funded rather than federally funded; fully funding the program; and ensuring local flexibility within the program.
Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT), who has been called one of Head Start’s biggest supporters in Washington, was warmly received by the audience Wednesday as he mentioned that he has a 16-month-old daughter, and joked that now he can receive the child rate plus AARP discounts when he goes out, and that just when she’s getting teeth and hair, “I’m losing mine.”
But jokes aside, Dodd praised the Head Start program and its efforts to help low-income children and families in early development, saying, “Head Start does work. Head Start does make a difference.” He stressed however, that Head Start is effective because it is a comprehensive program and not one that focuses just on literacy and numeracy. The fear for many is that if transferred into the Department of Education, Head Start would become merely a literacy program.
Caroline Haines, the chief operating officer at the local Child Development Programs in Gloucester, a private non-profit group that serves 500 Cape Ann children, 172 of them enrolled in Head Start, echoed Dodd’s remark. “[The Department of] Education doesn’t have a history of supporting comprehensive services,” like health and dental care, social services, nutrition analysis, and language skills, among other services her agency offers, she said in a phone interview.
“We really believe in a holistic view of the child,” she said, explaining that children and their families and all the things that affect their lives must be considered as a total package when working for the benefit of the child.
Michael McGrady, department director at NHSA, said the theme of the rally in Washington this week was that Head Start works as it is. “There’s no reason to move it,” he said in a phone interview.
He also said he would like to see the program adequately funded in the future, because at the present time, only 60 percent of eligible children in America are being served, according to NHSA numbers.
The future right now looks bleak to McGrady. Although Bush made a commitment last year that no child should be left behind, McGrady said that Bush’s recent proposal of a $133 million increase for the program “is not even enough to keep up with inflation.” Programs would have to struggle in the future to service even the children already enrolled, not to mention all the children who are eligible, he said.
Dodd, whose recent amendment to increase funding for the program by $200 million did not pass in the Senate, recognizes the financial woes Head Start faces.
“While I was not able to add new funds for Head Start, a modified version of my amendment was adopted which exempted the program from any across-the-board cuts in the bill,” he said. “That is the new environment under which we operate in the Senate,” he added, referring to the recent change from Democratic to Republican majority.
If the amendment passes in the House, where it is now being reviewed, Head Start would be exempted from the 2.9 percent cuts that many other programs now face in this troubled economy. Dodd said that without this exemption, “some 22,000 children would be cut from the program.”
Rep. John Tierney (D-Salem) emphasized that this program needs adequate funding, saying that it has proven effective but that it is not able to reach enough children. “A good workforce and good citizens start with kids who are going into school ready, willing and able to learn,” he said.
Tierney added that his main concern is keeping this program out of the Education Department, saying that “the nutrition aspect has been vital.” He said he thinks most Republicans have mixed feelings about the prospect of a transfer, but that the president could insist his party members fall in line.
In Gloucester, Haines said she was relieved about Dodd’s possible exemption for Head Start, but she added that childcare services did not get exempted from cuts. And in an environment where there are lengthy lines for full-day childcare and not enough day care providers to fill the need, the cuts are directly affecting the children.
Haines said that due to licensing difficulties and a shortage of day care providers, slots for childcare are being underused even when badly needed.
Haines said that the Republican agenda really focuses on literacy. Three assessments a year already are mandated, but under new proposals, national standardized assessments would be required for the 3 to 5 year olds who participate in Head Start, she said.
And there is a good possibility that it would be required that outside parties do the assessments, out of fear that Head Start teachers may skew the results. Haines said of additional assessments that the government is proposing, “More work, but no resources.”
“This is about children and families,” at the end of the day, Haines said. “It would be a sad day if that were changed.”
Published in The Newburyport Daily News, The Gloucester Daily News, and The Salem News in Massachusetts.
Bush Announces Emergency Relief of LIHEAP Funds
By Heidi Taylor
WASHINGTON--Following a month of extremely low temperatures, Massachusetts will receive $12.3 million in emergency Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) funds, but local sources say that low-income residents are still in a state of crisis.
With the temperature never crawling above a chilly 42 degrees and often in the single digits in Salem for all of January, Rep. John Tierney (D-Salem) said his office has received many calls from families worried they wouldn’t have heat to make it through the winter.
Tierney called the emergency increase in federal LIHEAP funds “literally life or death for the families in my district struggling with this harsh winter.”
“No one should ever be forced to make a decision between heat and food or heat and housing or heat and health care,” he said.
The Bush administration announced late last week that additional LIHEAP money would be released, and the $12.3 million figure for Massachusetts was decided Wednesday.
“This decision could not have been more timely,” said Tierney, who put in the urgent request for the funds to the White House last month along with 74 other House members.
“The whole thing is pretty hairy right now,” said Elliott Jacobson, the Energy Director at Action Inc. in Gloucester, the agency that distributes the funds locally, adding that funding for LIHEAP has decreased significantly over the past few years.
Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) Wednesday welcomed the announcement of the additional funds. “While the [state] law protects gas and electric heat customers with financial hardships from service shutoff during the heating season, oil, propane and kerosene users have no such protection,” he said in a statement. “These badly needed emergency funds will directly assist low-income families, the elderly and disabled to cope with this very cold winter and increased home heating costs.”
Prices on delivered fuels, particularly oil, have gone up in this past year, according to the Massachusetts Division of Energy Resources, which estimated that heating expenditures statewide will be up 45 percent this year. Last year the per gallon average price for heating oil was $1.10, according to the agency’s website. This year, the price is $1.25. This would mean that on average, consumers are paying an additional $300 this year to keep warm, the website said.
“Three quarters of our clients are out of fuel benefits,” Jacobson said, explaining that those families have no ability to heat their homes.
As President Bush prepares to send his fiscal 2004 budget to Congress next Monday, local sources said home heating costs will be an ongoing problem if adequate funds are not provided.
“Instead of having a plan, we’ve lurched from emergency to emergency,” Jacobson said. He added that he hopes to see an increase in benefit levels and a more concrete plan to ensure that all residents are able to keep warm.
Tierney called the funds released by the Bush administration only a temporary solution. “This emergency infusion of funding is vital at this time, and we also urge the President, going forward, to support at least the same level appropriated for LIHEAP for fiscal year 2003--$1.7 billion—in his budget for fiscal year 2004,” he said in a statement.
Published in The Newburyport Daily News, The Gloucester Daily News, and The Salem News in Massachusetts.
