A federal program that helped struggling customers pay their utility bills remains in limbo after the Trump administration fired its entire staff earlier this month.
About 25 staffers were responsible for calculating and disbursing funds annually from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program to U.S. states, territories and tribes.
Now experts worry what will become of the remaining LIHEAP funds.
“How do they plan to allocate the funds if there’s nobody there to do the work?” said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.
This fiscal year alone, approximately $4 billion was designated for the program by Congress. While most of that money has already been distributed this heating season, about $378 million remains.
The cuts at LIHEAP are part of an ongoing reduction led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Department of Health and Human Services, which targeted thousands of workers across the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration.
Last week, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions invited Kennedy to testify about the mass layoffs, but that hearing was postponed.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, the ranking member for the committee, sent a letter to Kennedy demanding that the staff at LIHEAP be reinstated. Thirty senators, including some in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan, also signed on.
“Failure to disburse these funds constitutes an illegal impoundment of bipartisan, congressionally appropriated funds and will put the health and well-being of some of the most vulnerable people in America at risk,” the letter stated.
