Balance of 2025 LIHEAP Funds Released

The remaining 2025 LIHEAP funds – $401.5 million – have been released. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the release of $401,540,000 for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program on May 1, and the money was released that day, said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA). “It’s already been distributed. The states have access to it,” Wolfe told Fuel Oil News.

Asked about the outlook for the program in fiscal year 2026, Wolfe said, “The administration is supposed to zero out the program for next year, so that’s of concern, of course.” Wolfe added, “I think Congress will reject it” – meaning the plan to eliminate LIHEAP. “The program has strong bipartisan support,” Wolfe said.

LIHEAP “has been under persistent threat from the Trump Administration, culminating with the April 1 firing of the entire LIHEAP staff at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS),” NEADA said in a statement on its website. “With limited staff to oversee LIHEAP and disburse funds, LIHEAP is facing unprecedented uncertainty. States are being expected to run their programs with no federal training or guidance and delays in funding that make it difficult to plan for the program. The true victims are the low-income families will be unable to pay their utility bills this summer, leaving vulnerable populations in danger of extreme heat exposure.”

The statement continued, “NEADA has been at the forefront of the fight to restore the federal LIHEAP staff and protect the program, which a leaked version of the Trump Administration’s 2026 budget planned to eliminate.”

NEADA said that eliminating LIHEAP from the Trump Administration’s 2026 budget would mean the loss of “$4 billion in assistance to about 6 million very low-income households that rely on LIHEAP to pay their home heating and cooling bills.”

Here is more from NEADA’s response to the proposed elimination of the program from the 2026 budget. It has been slightly edited for clarity and length:

The President’s proposal to gut federal support could not come at a worse time for the households served by LIHEAP. One out of six families are currently behind on their home energy bills and the total amount these families owe for their utilities is approximately $21 billion, the highest level since 2021 and up by about 30 percent since the end of 2023. In addition, 37.4 percent of families earning less than $50,000 a year reported in a recent Census survey that they were unable to pay an energy bill at least once in the past 12 months.

“I am very disappointed that the administration is seeking to zero-out LIHEAP funding in their next budget,” said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association. “Low-income families need support next year and beyond to pay their home energy bills, especially as electric and gas prices continue to soar [and new tariffs] are driving up prices for essential goods that low-income families rely on.

“The Administration’s budget proposal is full of inaccuracies that suggest a complete lack of understanding about the purpose of LIHEAP in helping some of the nation’s poorest families pay their utility bills,” Wolfe said.

NEADA said that inaccuracies it found included the following:  

• The President’s budget cites a 15-year-old Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that identified potential cases of fraud. While states disagreed with many of the claims in the report, it resulted in the establishment of a joint HHS/state task force to modernize the application process, increase program integrity, and increase the frequency of state program audits. The GAO has since confirmed that all recommended actions to reduce the program’s fraud risk have been implemented.

• The Administration’s budget states that LIHEAP is unnecessary because states have policies preventing utility disconnections for low-income families, effectively making LIHEAP a pass-through, benefitting utilities in the Northeast. This statement demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of who LIHEAP helps and how it helps them. First, LIHEAP funding is provided to all 50 states. It helps families in the Northeast during cold winter months but also helps families in Southern states during the heat of the summer, Midwestern families during sub-zero winter temperatures and summer tornadoes, and families in the West during periods of drought.

Benefits are applied to a family’s utility bill based on their income eligibility, regardless of the utility they use. LIHEAP is no more a “pass-through benefiting utilities” than food assistance is a pass-through for grocery stores, or the mortgage interest deduction is a pass-through for housing lenders. If the Trump Administration wants to strengthen protections for LIHEAP recipients, [it] should look to the Heating and Cooling Relief Act introduced by Senator Markey and Representative Ansari that expands consumer protections for households receiving LIHEAP and requires utilities to implement discounted utility rates based on household income.