Gas up, compassion down

Louisville Courier Journal (KY)
July 12, 2003

CONSUMERS are being advised to take action now to prepare for the huge increases expected in natural gas prices this winter: Caulk around your windows and doors; add insulation to your walls, floors and attic; replace your creaky old furnace.

Of course, if you're among the hundreds of thousands of low-income Kentuckians and Hoosiers who already need government help to pay power bills, you don't have the extra cash that weatherizing costs. You just have to hope the compassionate conservatives who run the federal government appreciate your plight.

But don't hold your breath; they don't. For example, the House Appropriations Committee has approved a labor, education, health and human services money bill that simply won't do the job done for those who need home heating assistance.

In fact, the committee even rebuffed President Bush, who asked that the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program be funded at $2 billion, which is simply what LIHEAP will spend during the current fiscal year. It cut his proposal by 10 percent.

Ranking Democrat David Obey called this "one of the single most glaring deficiencies" in the work of House appropriators. Ironically, that group includes Reps. Anne Northup and Hal Rogers, who represent the largest concentrations of urban and rural poverty in Kentucky.

The committee, as Mr. Obey accurately pointed out, did this "in the face of projections that natural gas prices will be at least 50 percent higher in the coming winter than they were this past winter, and more than 50 percent of LIHEAP recipients rely on natural gas."

This is how the latest tax cuts for the wealthy - a total of some $134 billion for Fiscal Year 2004 - nevitably play out: in failure to provide needed money for a whole range of purposes, from improving schools and protecting the homeland to financing medical research and housing military personnel.

The President's proposed compassion was also dissed by another appropriations subcommittee, the one on foreign operations. It approved less foreign and military aid than Mr. Bush requested: only $2 billion for the coming year to fight the international battle against AIDS.

It did it while Mr. Bush was in Africa talking about much more money than that. Subcommittee Chairman Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., grumbled, "I have to tell you quite candidly that the President compounds the problem by continuing to talk about $3 billion while he's in Africa."

The facts seem to vindictate Mr. Obey's assertions that, "In order to meet the comitment to lower taxes, we are abandoning commitments in almost every other area of federal responsibility."

But ultimately he doesn't blame the appropriators. He lays blame where it belongs, on the radical leadership now dominating the U.S. House of Representatives.