President Donald Trump's 2019 budget calls for the end of a heating assistance program for the poor, arguing it is rife with fraud and is unnecessary, the Associated Press reported.
The proposal is the second attempt by the Trump administration to eliminate the program. Last year Congress ultimately appropriated $3 billion, or 90 percent of the program's funding.
This time around, supporters are again mounting a battle to save the program, the AP reported.
"These arguments are very misleading and wrong," Mark Wolfe, director of the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association in Washington, D.C., told AP.
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program helps families pay their heating bills primarily in the form of a grant that is sent directly to utility companies or heating fuel vendors.
"If the president turned around and did away with that funding, I have no idea how we'd survive in the winter," Dwayne LaBrecque of Portland, Maine, a diabetic who is on disability after losing several toes and part of his foot to infection, told the AP.
The 2016 Trump voter told AP he will not vote for Trump again if he succeeds in killing off the program.
LIHEAP is popular in both cold weather and warm weather states, like Florida and Arizona, where it also distributes money to keep people keep cool in the summer, the AP reported.
In total, the program helps six million households, according to the AP.
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