The over-40-year-old Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) helps roughly 6.7 million low-income households afford heating and cooling by providing heating and cooling payment assistance (preventing energy shutoffs) and weatherization and energy efficiency programs through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Most of these households are low-income senior citizens, veterans, and medically fragile individuals. LIHEAP helps low-income households not have to decide between paying for the life-saving utilities that heat/cool their homes and buying groceries or paying for their medicines.
This critical life-saving program is in crisis as the administration has dismissed the entire federal staff responsible for administering it as part of a sweeping reduction at HHS and has proposed a total cut of LIHEAP in the 2026 federal budget. LIHEAP upholds human dignity and cares for the poor and vulnerable — core tenets of Catholic Social Teaching. As Catholics committed to caring for our common home and our most vulnerable neighbors, we must speak out against proposals that, at a time of increasing heat and cold emergencies, would eliminate or weaken essential energy programs — programs that reduce emissions, support families, protect the vulnerable, and uphold the dignity of all.
Urge your Members of Congress to support the full funding of this program and reject proposals that undermine energy justice and creation care. |
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