GREENFIELD — The White House’s top-line discretionary budget request for fiscal year 2026, released on May 2, proposes the slashing of two line items that, if approved, could significantly alter Community Action Pioneer Valley’s services.

President Donald Trump’s proposal seeks to zero-out line items for the Low Income Heating Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and Community Services Block Grants (CSBG), to the tune of $4.025 billion and $770 million, respectively. Overall, the budget represents a $163 billion, or 22.6% reduction from current fiscal year spending, with cuts targeting human service and international programs, among others. Defense spending would increase by 13%, totaling $1.01 trillion.

The potential cuts come as the Trump administration seeks to rein in what it said is “spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life,” according to a letter that U.S. Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought sent to the Senate Committee on Appropriations.

The budget request, which must be approved by Congress, could have a massive impact on Community Action Pioneer Valley, according to Executive Director Clare Higgins.

“I think we would be a much smaller agency,” she said. “It would be a huge loss to the region.”

A request for comment on specific replacements for these programs from the Office of Management and Budget was not returned, although Vought’s letter states the White House has “considered, for each program, whether the governmental service provided could be provided better by state or local governments (if provided at all).”

“Just as the federal government has intruded on matters best left to American families, it has intruded on matters best left to the levels of government closest to the people,” Vought wrote, “who understand and respect the needs and desires of their communities far better than the federal government ever could.”

Higgins refuted several of the White House’s claims in its budget memo, including one stating LIHEAP is “unnecessary because states have policies preventing utility disconnection for low-income households, effectively making LIHEAP a pass-through benefiting utilities in the Northeast.”

“Probably 60-plus percent of the people that we serve here get delivered fuels, which means that they are not protected from shutoff. The president misunderstands that,” Higgins said. “There isn’t the infrastructure in the rural parts of this country and in rural and exurban parts of Massachusetts to get natural gas to your home and have that protection, so it’s not a subsidy to utility companies.”

Funding for LIHEAP, which is also used for cooling homes in warmer states, is calculated through a complex formula that considers population and energy data. While the Trump administration points to Northeast states, Higgins noted this is a national program affecting millions of people across the U.S.

In fiscal year 2025, Massachusetts received more than $135 million for LIHEAP, Texas was allocated $167 million, Illinois was given $181 million and Ohio received $153 million, according to a government fact sheet.

Community Action Pioneer Valley receives between $8 million and $9 million each year for LIHEAP. In 2024, the agency distributed almost $9 million to 13,500 people, which not only keeps folks warm, but it also provides work for dozens of businesses contracting with the organization.

On top of the line item being zeroed out, Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also fired the entire federal staff of LIHEAP as part of the mass firing of 10,000 Health and Human Services workers. U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, in a statement, described the firings as a “direct attack on the health, safety and dignity of American families.”

“Eliminating the entire federal staff responsible for LIHEAP — a program that millions of households depend on to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer — isn’t reform, it’s sabotage,” Markey said. “This is what Trump governance looks like: dismantle the programs people rely on, create chaos in essential services and leave working families to foot the bill.”

For CSBG, Higgins said that money, which provides roughly $700,000 each year to Community Action, is a powerful supplement to fill in the gaps of other programs. Examples of programs supplemented by CSBG include Women, Infants and Children (WIC); Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) and the Center for Self-Reliance Food Pantry.

Those programs, Higgins said, provide invaluable support for many people in the region. VITA served 637 taxpayers in 2024 and secured $1.3 million in tax refunds, WIC provided $1.3 million in food benefits to 2,700 children and pregnant women in 2024, and the Center for Self-Reliance has seen a 34% increase in visits over the last three years.

“Often, that money is part of a larger pot of money, or other pots of money that we put together to meet the need,” Higgins said. “It allows us to extend those programs beyond what the funder wants.”

The White House, however, said in its letter that it is looking to “eliminate dollars that flow to Community Action Agencies who carry out their own agendas.”

These programs, whether providing assistance to heat someone’s home or providing healthy meals at a food pantry, can uplift seniors on fixed incomes, veterans, people with disabilities or folks who may need temporary assistance, which Higgins calls a need “for a reason or a season.”

“They lost their job and they’re looking for another job. So we see them for a year and then we never see them again,” Higgins said as an example, adding some people then repay the favor by donating to Community Action. “They benefit from the program when they were here, when they were in a certain place in their life, and now they’re able to say, ‘Now I can help with this program.’”

With the final decision on funding resting on Congress, Higgins said advocacy with the area’s legislators, who champion these programs, is an important tool.

“There’s a lot of allies and there’s a lot of people who care about their neighbors,” she said. “And there’s a lot of different ways to show that care.”

Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com. Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.