Maria Cantwell: “Thank you. Amendment No. 2077 Madam President, I do rise to support the Reed-Collins amendment to further make a down…”

“Thank you. Amendment No. 2077 Madam President, I do rise to support the Reed-Collins amendment to further make a down payment on the low-income energy assistance program known as LIHEAP. This is a program the State of Washington knows all too well. I say that because our State was hard hit by an energy crisis in the last several years that left many low-income people suffering the consequences of high energy costs. If anything, the Northwest is a poster child for what is about to happen to the rest of the country. Those results were devastating. In one county alone, Snohomish County, where I live, we had a 44-percent increase in disconnect rates in 1 year. That meant 14,000 people lost power to their homes because of high energy costs. Those high energy costs were also passed on to school districts, which had to choose between hiring teachers and getting books and paying the high cost of energy. It also had an impact on economic development. Businesses decided that perhaps they did not want to move to that county if they were energy-intensive users and businesses on low margins until the energy rates come down again. We saw people who actually lost their jobs and lost their pensions because of those high energy costs. What this amendment does, added to this bill, is to give the consumers in America who are the most hard hit by energy costs some relief. If you think about it, we are talking about the elderly, the disabled, those who are on low incomes.…”