Obama to slash home heating assistance for low-income families and seniors

With the Obama administration set to release its budget next Monday, details of the savage cuts being prepared are coming to the surface. In the largest cut thus far, the administration plans to slash funding in half for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps the poor, elderly and handicapped pay their heating and cooling costs.

The axing of LIHEAP amounts to a literal death sentence for many of those unable to pay exorbitant utility rates. It will result in more freezing deaths in the winter and heat-related deaths during the summer, as well as more fatal house fires as victims of utility shutoffs desperately seek to keep their families warm in bitter cold temperatures.

The money being taken from vital social programs will be used to pay for the trillions spent on the Wall Street bailout, the extension of Bush-era tax cuts for the richest 2 percent of the US population and the continuation of the administration’s criminal wars....more