Ready for Winter - Part 2

As we saw, George Bush is trying to cut funding for LIHEAP - the program that subsidizes poor families' heating bills. Hugo Chavez will help to pick up the tab again this year.

From a Venezuela Weekly News Roundup email:

The winter season is approaching, and the Wall Street Journal reported Monday on the danger posed by rising heating oil costs in the US. A solution to the crunch is presented by a Venezuelan aid program that provides the essential resource at subsidized costs and will benefit some 250,000 needy families in 23 US states in the coming months.

Damned socialist.

Ready for Winter?

Source (click picture to enlarge)

About 30 million low-income American households who will need help paying heating bills this winter from a U.S. government program will be left in the cold because of a lack of funding for the program.

[...]

The government's Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known as LIHEAP, only has enough funding to cover 16 percent of the 38 million poor households eligible for the program.

The current $2.16 billion LIHEAP budget in only $300 million more than what the program had when it was created by Congress in 1981. Despite higher energy costs, the Bush administration has proposed cutting the program's budget.

  Reuters

With the cost of oil hovering around $100 a barrel, this winter's heating bills are going to be more than many poor people can afford. How many will die this winter for lack of heat or from trying to heat their homes in deadly ways?