Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Wednesday that slashing programs aimed at helping low-income people pay for heating and cooling would be negated by the president’s efforts to expand fossil fuel electricity — even as he acknowledged that the program saves lives.
The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program provides support to about 6 million people by helping them pay for utility bills to keep their homes cool in the summer and warm in the winter. The Trump administration has proposed zeroing out funding for LIHEAP for fiscal 2026 and has also placed the program’s entire staff on administrative leave. The staff will be fired in June as part of a departmentwide restructuring effort by Kennedy. They have been on leave since April.
When asked about the cuts during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing Wednesday, Kennedy said he had recently returned from a trip to the Navajo Nation where leaders had told him “cuts to LIHEAP will end up killing people.”
“So, I understand the implications of this,” Kennedy said. “I think the rationale was that President Trump’s energy policy is going to reduce drastically the cost of energy in this country and if that happens, then LIHEAP is just another subsidy to the oil industry.”
