Congress has funded the federal government only through December 11, and the winter heating-assistance program that helps millions of older Americans pay their gas, electric and propane bills still has no money appropriated behind it for the fiscal year that began October 1. The stopgap, H.R. 6500, cleared the House 370-48 on September 1 and was signed by President Trump the next day, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s appropriations tracker. Meanwhile, the Administration for Children and Families has told states outright that it will not release a dollar of Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program funding until lawmakers actually pass one.
That gap matters most for households on fixed Social Security or pension income, who lean on LIHEAP each winter to keep furnaces running and avoid shutoff notices when heating bills spike. The program has weathered funding delays before, but this year it is tangled in a shorter, messier appropriations calendar than usual, one already marked by three separate shutdowns earlier in the same fiscal year. Two federal clocks are now running at once, and neither guarantees LIHEAP money reaches a state agency before the coldest months arrive.
A Stopgap Funds Washington Through December 11
The continuing resolution now in effect is the second one Congress produced this year for the same stretch of the calendar. An earlier version would have funded the government only through December 4 and cleared the House by a narrow 220-205 vote on July 21, but it was superseded before reaching the Senate floor. The version that actually became law, H.R. 6500, passed the Senate 90-6 on August 8 and then the House 370-48 on September 1, pushing the funding deadline out one week to December 11, per the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s tracking table.
A continuing resolution keeps agencies operating at prior-year funding levels; it does not enact the twelve annual appropriations bills that actually set new-year spending, including the Labor-HHS-Education bill that funds LIHEAP. That bill cleared the House Appropriations Committee by a 34-28 vote on June 9 but has not passed the full House or been marked up by the Senate committee at all, leaving LIHEAP’s real FY2027 funding source stuck well behind the stopgap that is merely holding the rest of government open.
Inside the kit: The 5 kinds of property-tax relief, the circuit-breaker credit that includes renters, help with heating, cooling and home repairs, and an application log and renewal calendar. Open The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit.
LIHEAP’s New Fiscal Year Has No Money Behind It Yet
The Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Community Services spelled out the condition in its own guidance to grant recipients: the agency “will only issue FY27 LIHEAP funding upon an appropriation from Congress; apportionment from the Office of Management and Budget; and the receipt and acceptance of a LIHEAP Plan submission that meets statutorily required information.” That language, signed by OCS Director Corine Frank in Action Transmittal LIHEAP-AT-2026-4, ties heating-aid money to three separate conditions, and the first of them, a congressional appropriation, has not been met.
States, territories and tribal grant recipients still had to move on schedule even without that appropriation. The Model Plan application that determines each recipient’s eligibility to draw down whatever money Congress eventually provides was due September 1, the same day the House passed the current stopgap. Recipients were permitted to “clone” their prior-year plan data to speed the paperwork, but every plan still required updated eligibility thresholds for heating, cooling, crisis and weatherization assistance before OCS would even begin reviewing it.
Grant recipients whose plans came back rejected face a separate deadline of their own: federal regulations require the editing and resubmission process to be finished no later than December 15, four days after the current continuing resolution itself expires. A state that misses that window risks compounding a paperwork delay on top of a funding delay it has no control over, at the exact point in the calendar when heating demand starts climbing.
Two Deadlines Now Converge Before Winter
The stakes are higher this year because FY2026 was not a smooth appropriations cycle to begin with. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s tracker notes that the current fiscal year saw three separate funding lapses: a 43-day shutdown from October 1 through November 12 over the extension of Affordable Care Act tax credits, a brief lapse from January 31 through February 3, and a Department of Homeland Security shutdown running from February 14 through April 30 over immigration enforcement funding. The FY2026 appropriations process was not fully resolved until that DHS bill passed in April, months after the fiscal year had already started.
Nothing in either the CRFB tracker or the ACF guidance says a repeat is coming, but the mechanics are the same ones that produced last year’s delays: a short-term patch keeping the lights on while the underlying spending bills, including the one that actually funds LIHEAP, remain unfinished. If the Labor-HHS-Education bill is not enacted before December 11, Congress will need either another continuing resolution or a lapse in funding, and LIHEAP’s appropriation would still be pending either way.
For now, the concrete facts are the ones both agencies have put in writing: a stopgap that expires December 11, a heating-assistance program whose new-year money cannot legally move until Congress appropriates it, and a set of state paperwork deadlines running on their own separate clock in the meantime. The Office of Community Services has made clear it is waiting on Congress, not the other way around, and its own transmittal is the record that says so.
Heating Help When Funding Is Unsettled
Congress’s stopgap fight and the unresolved LIHEAP appropriation leave a gap the federal notices themselves never address: what a household on a fixed income does about heating and property costs while Washington’s calendar plays out. The guidance above is written for state grant administrators, not for the homeowner or renter deciding which bill to prioritize this winter. Property-tax and utility-relief programs, run separately by each state, keep operating on their own schedules no matter what happens to the federal appropriation.
The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit is an 11-page kit that walks through the 5 kinds of property-tax relief and the circuit-breaker credit that includes renters.
Open the 5 kinds of property-tax relief in The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit.
This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI and reviewed by The Money Overview editorial team.
