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There were also a few heroes in Congress. Even before ACORN raided the Rhode Island Republican chairman’s office, the state’s Democratic senator had drafted an amendment to the appropriations bill. Jack Reed’s amendment took all discretionary LIHEAP funding away from the president and restored it to mandatory “formula” funding that Bush cannot control. The amendment increased LIHEAP funding from the $1.4 billion proposed by Bush to $2 billion. The amendment won on an 88–4 vote.

Then Reed and Maine Republican Susan Collins fired off a letter to the president, urging him to immediately release the emergency contingency money, since it was no longer under his discretion. They demanded he use the power of the executive branch to get the money to the people who needed it. The senators’ language was diplomatic, but one of Reed’s staffers said the amendment intentionally took all discretionary funds from the president. Bush could either wait to see the money spent in the following fiscal year or release it immediately. He could no longer deny it to people who couldn’t afford heating oil and gas.

Fort Worth writer Sam Hudson tells young reporters that “trousers are the most manly ass-covering, though some men try to cover their asses with paper.” In a response to the 88–4 Senate vote and the letter from the two senators, George Bush covered his with paper. Two sheets, to be precise. One was an executive order releasing $200 million from the discretionary funds over which he was losing his discretion. The other was a press release in which the president announced the release of funds. This adroit move allowed him to save his face and cover his ass at the same time. By releasing $200 million of the $300 million in the fund, he maintained the illusion that he had a choice. The $100 million he didn’t order spent will be included in the mandatory funding for LIHEAP in the year to come.

The president’s press release provided the angle for most news reporters writing about LIHEAP. Some news stories went so far as to describe the Senate vote and make it clear that the president had no choice, but most people concluded that President Bush had done right by millions of Americans in need of help with their heating.

It was too late for many. The money, released in late January, could not ensure that the ten thousand households without heat in Philadelphia would have their heat turned on. Or the fourteen thousand freezing homes in Chicago. But it did help tens of thousands of people across the country, where states responded to increased fuel costs and increased demands for help by reducing the size of LIHEAP grants, cutting staff, and reducing the number of months covered.

If you don’t believe the help is desperately needed, get into your car. In any city in the country you are a short drive from the people Michael Harrington described fifty years ago in The Other America.

In Philadelphia there are entire neighborhoods where a reporter can find “heat-or-eat” horror stories by knocking on doors and asking a few questions. If you’re aiming for diversity, within four miles of Philly’s Center City hotels, where dinner for two means a $200 tab, there’s a heap of multicultural LIHEAP stories. Luz Cruz lives four miles north of Center City, in the shadow of Temple University. Four miles west, near the University of Pennsylvania, Frances Hassell lives in an eighty-year-old row house that seems to be collapsing from the front porch inward. “Look for the torn blue tarp on my roof,” Hassell said. “That’s how I tell people to find my house.” She is a tall, fair-skinned woman with red hair, struggling to make it on a $570 monthly SSI check. Her husband, a World War II veteran who was almost twenty years her senior, died a few years ago. She’s disabled and on her own. Last year her $250 LIHEAP grant helped. “It hasn’t come through yet this year,” she said. She has been unable to complete the application process because when she calls all she gets is a recording. Her gas bill is averaged over twelve months.