The Trump administration's recent layoffs of the entire staff managing the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) pose a threat to millions of households relying on the program for financial aid with heating and cooling bills. Senator Edward Markey criticized the action as sabotage, highlighting concerns over whether the administration intends to eliminate the program entirely. While $4.1 billion for the program has been allocated for fiscal year 2025, the firings significantly compromise the agency's operational capacity to assist Americans during increasingly severe summer and winter weather.
Eliminating the entire federal staff responsible for LIHEAP - a program that millions of households depend on to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer - isn't reform, it's sabotage.
They fired everybody; there's nobody left to do anything. Either this was incredibly sloppy, or they intend to kill the program altogether.
The layoffs were part of a broader purge Monday of approximately 10,000 employees from the Department of Health and Human Services as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. moved to drastically reorganize the agency.
Congress had approved $4.1 billion for the program for fiscal year 2025, and about 90% of that money had already been sent to states in October to help households struggling with high heating costs.
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