Reauthorization of the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program

Excerpt from Reauthorization of the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Children, Family, Drugs and Alcoholism of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, United States Senate, One Hundred Third Congress, Second Session on Examining Proposed Legislation Authorizing Funds for the Low-Incom The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:45 p.m., in room SD-430, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Senator Christopher J. Dodd (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Senators Dodd, Mikulski, Wellstone, Wofford, and Jeffords. Senator Dodd. First of all, let me apologize to my colleagues and to the witnesses. We just concluded our caucus, and we are pleased to welcome some 88 Close-Up students who are down here from Connecticut, some of whom are here in the room. If I could, let me share with the committee some opening remarks, and then I will turn to our colleagues for any opening statements they have, and then we will turn to our witnesses. I would like to welcome everyone here this afternoon to this hearing of the Subcommittee on Children, Family, Drugs and Alcoholism. Today, we are going to discuss two programs that are critically important to millions of Americans - the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program and the Community Services Block Grant. These may not be glamorous programs that receive major publicity, but for the families that receive help through them, they can literally be life savers. Together with Head Start, these programs form the core of the Human Services Act, which will be reauthorized this year. They share a common orientation of working within the community to address the needs of individuals and families seeking to move toward self-sufficiency. For millions of families all across this Nation, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, commonly known as LIHEAP, is the difference between going cold and staying warm, the difference between being overwhelmed by hard times and hanging on, the difference between skimping on the food budget to pay the utilities and just getting by. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.