What georgie has done to us....

Millions hit by shortfall

in heating aid

As fuel prices have soared, federal funding hasn't budged

By John W. Schoen
Senior Producer
MSNBC

With winter not yet half over, the surge in the cost of heating a home has already begun to stretch consumers’ budgets to the limit – and beyond. Sales of wood stoves have surged. In the farm belt, they’re burning surplus corn to keep warm. And a scarcity of funding for fuel assistance has squeezed millions of low-income families, as money budgeted for groceries or medical supplies is now being consumed by higher heating bills.

For Linda Kelly, a Quincy, Mass. mother of three, higher heating costs kicked in last October, just after her husband’s health plan doubled the co-payments on the family’s prescription drug coverage. Kelly suffers from multiple sclerosis and one of her daughters is diabetic. So without help paying the heating bill, the family faces some tough choices.

“Maybe (my daughter) won’t test as often as she should using the strips,” she said. “Maybe I’ll go an extra day, miss one pill during the week. You do what you can.”

To make ends meet, Kelly first turned to the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, as she’s done for the past five winters. Under the 23-year-old program, assistance is available for a typical family of four earning less than $30,000 a year. But this winter, with energy prices soaring, funding for the program just hasn't kept up.

“When I was first on it, it was around $700 you got for the season,” she said. “That’s when (heating) oil was selling for 60 or 70 cents a gallon. Now it’s $2.59 a gallon, and we only get $525. So that doesn’t even fill a tank.”

This winter, help for the Kelly family came from an unlikely source -– the government of Venezuela.

Continues...


--This is just shameful.

Absolutely shameful.--