Lawmakers buck calls to defund low-income heating program

Source: Roll Call

Posted April 24, 2026 at 4:33pm


Lawmakers are signaling they’ll reject a Trump administration request to eliminate funding for a program that provides heating and cooling assistance to low-income Americans, one of the few on-topic issues repeatedly raised during hearings on the Health and Human Services Department budget. The administration’s fiscal 2027 budget request for the HHS proposed zeroing out the $4 billion funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program received in the current fiscal year.

The White House argues the program is unnecessary because many states have policies preventing utility disconnection for low-income households, characterizing the program “a pass-through benefiting utility companies” with a history of integrity concerns — something that lawmakers and advocates dispute.

During HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s budget hearings over the past week, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, and in both chambers, chastised the administration for again proposing cuts.

“It’s particularly painful for working people and low-income people who don’t have access, as they did before, to health care, access this winter to heating assistance. And I don’t think that’s the same problem they’re seeing down in Mar-a-Lago,” Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said Tuesday at the Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee. This is the sixth Trump budget that has sought to eliminate funding for LIHEAP. Congress has rejected these requests, including the current Republican majority, which funded the program at $4.13 billion, a $20 million increase, for fiscal 2026.

Read more: https://rollcall.com/2026/04/24/lawmakers-buck-calls-to-defund-low-income-heating-program/