The Health and Human Services Department is preparing a response to four chairmen of House committees and subcommittees, including House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., about the agency's oversight of state administration of the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, an HHS spokesman has told The Hagstrom Report.

The committee and subcommittee leaders wrote HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on April 17 to ask for her views on some states’ decisions to increase LIHEAP payments to $20 per year per household to avoid a cut in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments, better known as SNAP or food stamps, under the new farm bill.

States had been making LIHEAP payments as low as 10 cents per year per household to trigger higher food stamp benefits, but the farm bill requires that the payment be at least $20 per year to qualify for a standard utility deduction when calculating benefits.

The Congressional Research Service has also prepared a post-farm bill report on the link between LIHEAP and food stamp benefits.

▪ House Letter to Secretary Sebelius ▪ Congressional Research Service — The 2014 Farm Bill: Changing the Treatment of LIHEAP Receipt in the Calculation of SNAP Benefits