America (Washington Insider Magazine) -According to a report revealed Friday, the Biden administration is awarding an extra $4.5 billion in funds to low-income Americans to cover heating bills through a second epidemic winter, with cold-weather areas receiving the greatest portion.
Last year’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan coronavirus relief package included a budget boost for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, that more than doubled the program’s typical funding level. Since the program’s inception in 1981, these amounts mark the biggest allocation in a single year.
The Associated Press got an advance draft of the state distribution breakdown, which clearly reveals that chilly states with greater heating expenditures are given priority. Minnesota, for example, got over $274 million in energy aid for low-income families. Texas, on the other hand, received only $10 million more while representing five times larger population. New York received little under $876 million despite having a population of fewer than 20 million people in comparison to Texas’ 29 million.
President Joe Biden’s administration has made pledges from seven key utility companies in the u.s. to ensure that customers seeking assistance will not be cut off and to identify and notify beneficiaries who are eligible for federal assistance.
Delmarva Power, Baltimore Gas and Electric, ComEd, Atlantic City Electric, Pacific Gas & Electric, PECO, and Pepco are among the new promises made Friday morning. They join a group of seven other big utilities that made similar commitments at the end of last year.
As per the Labor Department’s consumer price index, electricity and natural gas costs are nearly 11% higher than a year earlier. According to the Energy Information Administration, residential heating oil costs are up roughly 40% from a year ago. The rate of increase has slowed in recent months, with wholesale heating price of oil hovering around where they have been at the beginning of October.According to NBC News the assistance is intended to soften the blow of rising winter energy costs. Republican lawmakers, on the other hand, claim that the whole rescue package, which was signed by the Democratic president in March, increased inflation by injecting too much money into the economy.
