As Trump tries to end utility help program, Arizona senators want equal coverage for extreme heat

Arizona’s U.S. senators are renewing calls to revamp a decades-old federal program that helps low-income households manage energy costs, arguing that it shortchanges residents of states where extreme heat rather than frigid winters is the big problem.

Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly say the formula is unfair and warn that lives are at stake.

“Families are going to be cranking up the A/C already and feeling it in their power bills,” Kelly posted after Phoenix hit triple digits on March 18, the earliest date since 1988.

Arizona, which has a population of 7.6 million people, received $61 million through the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program in 2023 compared to $287 million for Michigan, population 10.1 million. Fewer than 5% of eligible households in Arizona received LIHEAP assistance that year, compared with nearly 90% in Michigan.

Dread of high cooling bills is an annual ritual for Arizona residents.

“When you’re on one income and your utilities go up $50 or $100 a month, you don’t have much to stretch with,” said Kath Noble, a Mesa resident who serves as president of the Arizona Association of Manufactured Home Owners. “They just feel trapped. … I have talked to a number of older residents on a fixed income who only turn on the air conditioning for a few hours a day during the summer because they were so worried about paying for the bills.”

LIHEAP, created by Congress in 1981, is the primary federal program to help low-income households cover energy costs, particularly heating and cooling.

The program provides direct payments to utilities on behalf of eligible households – typically, those at or below 150% of the federal poverty level.

LIHEAP has strong bipartisan support, though President Donald Trump has tried to eliminate it in all six budgets he has submitted to Congress, including the most recent on April 3. Ending LIHEAP would lop $4 billion in federal spending.

Starting in 1984, Congress promised states they would get at least as much funding as they had under a 1981 formula. That formula was crafted by lawmakers from cold-weather states and skewed toward their constituents.

When Congress doesn’t allocate enough money, the old formula is used – and states that were getting less at the time are shortchanged.

Under Kelly and Gallego’s proposal, called the LIHEAP Parity Act, cold-weather states would no longer be guaranteed as much funding as they got under the old formula, ensuring a more even distribution of whatever funds Congress provides for the program each year.

The senators introduced the bill last May.

The bill has stalled in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The chair, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and the ranking Democrat, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, did not respond to requests for comment.

“With Arizona facing record-breaking heat, affordable energy isn’t optional – it’s essential,” Gallego said in a statement. “Arizona shouldn’t be shortchanged by a federal formula that leaves hot-weather states behind.”

Arizona officials in both parties support the revamp.

“In Arizona, we know it's life or death if you don't have air conditioning in the summer,” Arizona Corporation Commissioner Lea Márquez Peterson, a Republican, said in an interview. “I would like to see that LIHEAP is reconstructed to provide greater emphasis on those states that see high heat in the summer.”

Peterson contacted the senators’ aides on April 6 urging them to try again to retool LIHEAP.

“Reform is much needed to not only provide greater transparency in how the formula is developed and a better understanding of what data is used, but also to ensure states like Arizona have greater access to funds we all pay into,” Arizona Corporation Commissioner Kevin Thompson, a Republican, said via email. “Let’s get more of those dollars back into Arizona to help our most vulnerable.”

"The federal government has long treated cold weather as dangerous and heat as an inconvenience,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said in a statement. “Extreme heat kills, and low-income families, seniors, and people with disabilities should not have to choose between paying rent and running their air conditioner during a deadly heat wave.”

In 2025, there were 430 heat-related deaths in Maricopa County alone, according to the county health department’s annual report.

That was down from 608 heat-related deaths in 2024, when temperatures in Phoenix hit 100 degrees for a record 113 days – the city’s hottest summer since recordkeeping began in 1896.

The county recorded 645 heat deaths in 2023, the most in any year.

Arizona’s worsening heat spells have meant higher cooling costs. Not everyone’s budget can absorb that.

“It’s very hard to admit that you have to turn off the electricity in order to make your budget every month. That’s sad. It breaks my heart,” Noble said.

Arizona's Department of Economic Security administers the federal aid program known as LIHEAP, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps defray costs of heating and cooling. (Image from Arizona Department of Economic Security) Allison Hawley, a resident of a 55+ community of manufactured homes and recreational vehicles in north Phoenix, paid $359 for electricity in September.

“Most of the folks in here are on fixed incomes, so they … are choosing whether they're going to eat that month or pay that bill,” she said. “It's really rough.”

In Quartzsite, a town two hours west of Phoenix known for its large retiree population, resident Terri Newlon said she walks around her RV community and encourages seniors to keep the A/C on.

But many are concerned about the cost and fear being evicted over unpaid utility bills.

And some don’t qualify for LIHEAP because they don’t live year-round in the RV park.

Newlon, a board member for the Association for the Education of Manufactured, Park Model, and RV Home Owners, a nonprofit focused on protecting the rights of homeowners who live on leased land, tells her neighbors their lives are more important than saving some money.

“Cool your home off. … Go ahead and let the bill rack up, and we'll find a way to negotiate,” she said.

According to the National Weather Service, nine of the 10 hottest Phoenix summers on record have happened since 2000.

For each of the past three years, the state’s major electricity companies, Arizona Public Service and Salt River Project, broke records for peak demand. In 2025, that was on July 9, when Phoenix hit 118 degrees.

APS spokesperson Marika Cooley noted the company offers various programs to help residents to hold down or cope with energy costs. “We always encourage folks to give us a call,” she said.

This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.