Thirty Million American Homes

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2007-10-24 07:48pm

...may go without heat this winter due to Bush's War

<Shep>Oh Noes, Raw Story is an eb0l librul left-wing hate site!!1!1</Shep> wrote:CNN's Cafferty: Bush putting the poor out in the cold to fund war
Mike Aivaz and Nick Juliano
Published: Tuesday October 23, 2007

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Amid $190 billion Iraq request, 30 million Americans won't be able to heat homes this winter

As he prepares to ask for $190 billion to fund the war in Iraq, President Bush refuses to approve an extra half-billion dollars that help one in four American households pay skyrocketing home-heating bills this winter.

The debate illustrates what critics say are Bush's out-of-wack spending priorities, after he vetoed a popular measure that would have expanded healthcare available to poor children.

"No money for kids' health insurance, no money to help poor families pay their heating bills but President Bush wants $190 billion additional for 2008 for his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," CNN commentator Jack Cafferty said Monday. "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says the president's new request means the cost of Iraq war is now approaching $650 billion. I wonder if the Democrats will give him the money."

Rising oil prices are creating a "heat or eat" dilemma for families struggling near or below the poverty line.

"Parents know that children can freeze to death more quickly than they starve to death, and so most decrease food purchases first to pay for heat," wrote Dr. Deborah A. Frank, director of the Grow Clinic for Children, and Joseph P. Kennedy II, chairman and president of Citizens Energy Corp., in the Boston Globe Sunday.

The home heating debate involves grants distributed through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known as LIHEAP. The program operates with an annual budget of $2.16 billion -- just $300 million more than when the program started in 1991, as Cafferty notes.

The House wants to bump LIHEAP funding to $2.66 billion per year, while the Senate has approved a bill that would maintain its current funding level, which would only cover 16 percent of the 38 million eligible American households, according to Reuters.

But even static funding is too much for Bush, who wants to cut the program to $1.78 billion for fiscal year 2008. That's less than 1 percent of the $192 billion he has requested to fund dual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it amounts to about a week's worth of Pentagon war spending, according to CNN.

The following video is from CNN's Cafferty File Jack Cafferty, broadcast on October 22, 2007

Well this shit sucks, to put it in British Understatese. Did we have this kind of trouble for Vietnam and the little wars throughout the '80s?

Oh, and when I posted the link in chat, it drew some fire from a predictable direction:

[18:43:00] MKSheppard: may I suggest stocking up on blankets?

Maybe some people are poor enough they CANNOT AFFORD blankets, you Calvinist coward! That's why Jesus said 'Help the Poor'. Better dead than Red, I guess

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2007-10-24 08:03pm

Awesome. My name has now become a HTML tag!

And PS. I'm not a Calvinist, they're damn dirty protestants.

Knife · Post by **Knife** » 2007-10-25 01:18am

The House wants to bump LIHEAP funding to $2.66 billion per year, while the Senate has approved a bill that would maintain its current funding level, which would only cover 16 percent of the 38 million eligible American households

Uhm, assuming that everyone in the US owned their own hourse, that's 10% of the population elegiable for this program. Start throwing in other people into each house and the % would get bigger. I'm all for helping the poor getting essentials, but 10% of the population seems a bit excessive and actually indicates a bigger problem we need to face besides this little problem.

Post by **K. A. Pital** » 2007-10-25 01:28am

I'm all for helping the poor getting essentials, but 10% of the population seems a bit excessive and actually indicates a bigger problem we need to face besides this little problem.

The bigger problem is a refusal to do anything about oil price crises and the fact that inflation of consumer good prices is starting to push American households down into "we can't pay for heating ourselves".

Knife · Post by **Knife** » 2007-10-25 01:33am

Stas Bush wrote:
I'm all for helping the poor getting essentials, but 10% of the population seems a bit excessive and actually indicates a bigger problem we need to face besides this little problem.
The bigger problem is a refusal to do anything about oil price crises and the fact that inflation of consumer good prices is starting to push American households down into "we can't pay for heating ourselves".

Well duh. I wasn't going to spell it out but yeah, that. Why bicker about a 'help the poor' program when that program is actually subsidizing a significant portion of US homes. Might as well start bickering about the larger problem.

Count Dooku · Post by **Count Dooku** » 2007-10-25 02:32am

At the very coldest, it gets 25F here on a January night, but most of the time it won't get below 32F. This doesn't mean a whole lot to me, but there sure as hell a lot of people who are going to be right in the middle of this shitty deal

Ariphaos · Post by **Ariphaos** » 2007-10-25 02:53am

Count Dooku wrote:At the very coldest, it gets 25F here on a January night, but most of the time it won't get below 32F. This doesn't mean a whole lot to me, but there sure as hell a lot of people who are going to be right in the middle of this shitty deal :x

It routinely gets too cold to snow, here. In downtown Minneapolis there are guys (and occasionally women) standing on street corners asking for help. The people who actually have homes to be warm in, I'm less worried about.

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2007-10-25 06:12am

Knife wrote:
Stas Bush wrote:
I'm all for helping the poor getting essentials, but 10% of the population seems a bit excessive and actually indicates a bigger problem we need to face besides this little problem.
The bigger problem is a refusal to do anything about oil price crises and the fact that inflation of consumer good prices is starting to push American households down into "we can't pay for heating ourselves".
Well duh. I wasn't going to spell it out but yeah, that. Why bicker about a 'help the poor' program when that program is actually subsidizing a significant portion of US homes. Might as well start bickering about the larger problem.

True, but since shelter is a matter of life and death, subsidize now, bicker later.

Lonestar · Post by **Lonestar** » 2007-10-25 06:14am

So Basically Citgo is going to have another season of free publicity for Hugo Chavez, is what the article is saying?

Post by **K. A. Pital** » 2007-10-25 06:23am

If a PR stunt for an ardently anti-american president helps people better than their own American government, that's called epic fail.

Lonestar · Post by **Lonestar** » 2007-10-25 06:46am

Stas Bush wrote:If a PR stunt for an ardently anti-american president helps people better than their own American government, that's called epic fail.

Hey, it's what they did last year.