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President Trump's budget proposal would completely eliminate a program that helps about 6 million low-income households heat and cool their homes. From member station GBH in Boston, Craig LeMoult reports that supporters of the program are hoping Congress will decide to save it.
CRAIG LEMOULT, BYLINE: On a beautiful spring afternoon, the birds are chirping as 60-year-old Jeanette Cutts sits on her front porch in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester. On a day like this, cold weather seems like a lifetime away, but Cutts is already thinking about it.
JEANETTE CUTTS: Winter in New England is inevitable. Like, this is great. This is wonderful. But it is coming.
LEMOULT: And she's already worried about how she's going to afford to heat her house this year.
CUTTS: Filling our oil tank - that's about eight or $900 every time you have to fill it. And then on average, it's about three times in the winter.
LEMOULT: To help pay for all that oil, Cutts has gotten assistance from a federal program called LIHEAP - the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. In warmer states, the program also helps with electricity bills for summer cooling. Cutts and her husband run a small business, but it's not very lucrative. So she was upset to hear the entire federal staff behind LIHEAP was fired last month, and the program was recently zeroed out in President Trump's proposed budget.
CUTTS: How are we going to make this happen when we're already struggling trying to keep afloat? And now this is going to be taken, all of it, and for what reason?
LEMOULT: The president's budget cites a 15-year-old report that said there was fraud and abuse of the program. A federal task force has since made recommendations that have been implemented. Sharon Scott-Chandler heads the group Action for Boston Community Development, which helps administer the program for about 20,000 households.
SHARON SCOTT-CHANDLER: We are heavily regulated, and we stick to very stringent documentation and rules and regulations that govern this program.
LEMOULT: The president's budget also says the program is unnecessary because of state policies preventing utility disconnection for low-income households. But they still have to pay for the heat. Liz Berube heads the group Citizens for Citizens, which administers LIHEAP for Taunton and Fall River.
LIZ BERUBE: The moratorium doesn't mean you shouldn't be paying your bill. You're just - you're protected from being shut off.
LEMOULT: Also, for residents like Jeanette Cutts who heat their homes with oil, they can't refill their tank if they can't pay. Berube says for some, losing fuel assistance could prove fatal.
BERUBE: In the winter here, people will put their oven on and, you know, open the door and try to get the apartment warm by very bad, dangerous means.
LEMOULT: Tad DeHaven of the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute says it's the responsibility of states - not the federal government - to provide energy assistance.
TAD DEHAVEN: Because state and local governments are closer to the people, and these are local and state needs. They are not national needs.
LEMOULT: In Trump's first term, he zeroed out the budget for LIHEAP twice. Both times, Congress responded by funding the program. Democratic Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts says more than half of LIHEAP funds go to states that voted for Trump.
ED MARKEY: We're going to need Republicans of courage who will stand up on each and every one of the issues where Trump this year is severely cutting critical programs.
LEMOULT: For Jeanette Cutts of Dorchester, making sure families like hers can afford to heat their homes is a moral issue.
CUTTS: If you just cut something out without actually looking at the ramifications of the effects that it's going to have on families, that's being inhumane in a time when we need humanity.
LEMOULT: And she's hoping members of Congress on both sides of the aisle agree.
For NPR News, I'm Craig LeMoult in Boston.
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