Fears long, cold winter for the poor
This may be a long, hard, and cold winter for thousands of Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) recipients Representative Jonathan Jackson (D-1st) warned, blaming staffing and budget cuts for FY2025-FY2026 on the Trump administration.
With winter fast approaching, program participants face a double delay in receiving assistance because of the unprecedented lengthy government shutdown, in its 37th day as of Thursday, November 6.
Jackson was referring to the entire LIHEAP staff at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) being laid off by the Trump administration.
He said they were seasoned workers who knew how to administer the program and how to distribute funds to the various states. “Many of these jobs have been eliminated,” he said, especially those held by seasoned employees.
Jackson is worried because in the proposed FY2026 budget, the LIHEAP program is being eliminated though there was strong bipartisan support and it has congressional approval for FY2026 funding. The person who calculated state allocations was also laid off.
Worried that people will not be able to pay their heating bills, Jackson is not alone in his concerns. Also worried are officials from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA), state officials like Pennsylvania’s Governor Shapiro and other advocates who agree this program is in trouble because of staffing cuts and zero funding for the program in President Donald Trump’s proposed budget.
With this administration’s wave of anti-poor policies, Rep. Jackson expressed grave concerns for the 42 million Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients caught in the political crossfire of partisan politics and an unprecedented government shutdown. The administration cut $187 billion from the SNAP program according to Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Erica Kenney and Cindy Leung, associate professors of public health nutrition.
They estimated about four million people will see their food assistance cut or substantially reduced. “Because of its ability to help with the income resources of a household, SNAP has been shown to reduce health care expenditures, particularly for conditions like heart disease or hypertension,” said Leung.
“When we invest in SNAP, we know it reduces food insecurity, reduces health care expenditures and also generates economic activity,” she stated.
Jackson said this SNAP crisis “is horrible because hunger hurts,” in an exclusive interview Saturday, November 1.
Jackson is launching a hot meals program where he is inviting people to come and eat for free. “We will be going to select buildings primarily on the south side. We have a great group of volunteers. We will be cooking food and offering it to the people.” He said details are forthcoming.
And Jackson is worried about the Republicans blocking passage of the extended American Care Act tax subsidies that will keep health care affordable for the poor.
Republicans want to eliminate those subsidies and that is part of the reason Democrats won’t vote for the Republican budget because if approved, ACA premiums would “go through the roof,” warned Jackson. “Trump has been attacking the poor all along,” he stated.
Jackson is also worried about the cuts to Medicaid.
And with all of these cuts being announced, Jackson criticized Trump for announcing “gold-plated knobs and shower heads in the bathrooms in the White House and how beautiful they were.
“He announced the destruction of the East Wing of the White House to make room for a $300 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom, not to benefit the average person but to have enclaves of parties for the billionaires, the wealthiest people who funded this program,” said Jackson.
“He has consistently conducted a war on the American poor, and he has a great disdain for people he doesn’t think were blessed to have money.
“He doesn’t see the value of ordinary people, and now the people have to make the choice between medicine and meals, but he made huge, trillion-dollar tax breaks” for the wealthy. “If we restored these tax breaks, we would have enough to pay for our government services,” Jackson reasoned. “People are hurting, and he knows this but he doesn’t care.
Asked about Trump’s giving Argentina $20 billion with another $20 billion credit line, Rep. Jackson said, “That is for the major hedge funds who are major landowners for the agricultural sector that made huge bets in Argentina.”
According to Jackson, Argentina is “irrelevant” to the U.S. This was purely an inside deal to protect and bail out Mr. Scott Bessent who is economic advisor, fundraiser, and major donor for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
According to Politico, Bessent, as the U.S. Secretary, has an active financial relationship with Argentina, especially with the $20 billion currency swap to support the Argentine peso and economy. Bessent, Jackson said, is friends to several billionaire hedge fund operators.
When asked if this can be done without Congressional approval Jackson said, “Trump is not supposed to, but House Speaker Johnson has shown no leadership and has let this happen, and many people around him have shown no character.”
Jackson said since Trump and Johnson won in 2024, “They have abused their powers. Attorney Pam Bondi should understand her job is to the people and not to the president, but Trump made it clear that the Attorney General works for him and not for the American people.
“That is wrong. It’s a violation, and the U.S. Senators should not have supported her becoming the U.S. Attorney General.”