First, the bad news. The Obama administration, under pressure from Republicans to cut spending, has proposed a 50 percent cut to the main federal program that helps people keep their heat on. The latest White House budget, issued in February, proposed slashing funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known as LIHEAP, from $5.1 billion to $2.57 billion, a move that would bring the program’s funding back to its 2008 level.

The program got a big budget increase under the president’s stimulus program, which Obama now says needs to be scaled back.

“We doubled the home heating assistance program when I first came into office in part because there was a huge energy spike,” Obama said at a press conference announcing the cuts last  February. “Energy prices have now gone down but the cost of the program has stayed the same. So what we’ve said is let’s go back to a more sustainable level.”

In Traverse City and the surrounding county, which is home to about 14,000 people, Obama’s proposal would cut emergency heating assistance — given to 3,633 households last year — almost in half.

The fighting over the LIHEAP budget in Washington has forced Michigan officials to lower the cap for emergency assistance, according to Whitney Skearns, customer assistance coordinator for Consumers Energy and co-chair of the Coalition to Keep Michigan Warm. Until Oct. 1,  a family could get up to $800 to turn back on the utilities, Skearns said. Now the maximum is $450.

At the same time, the need for energy assistance is growing, despite the fact that Traverse City has flourished in the last decade. Unlike much of the state, northwestern Michigan has gained population with the arrival of retirees and people escaping Flint and Detroit. Filmmaker Michael Moore has rehabbed the city’s State Theater and launched a film festival that sold 128,000 tickets this summer. Downtown, once home to Woolworth’s and Big Boy, is now lined with stores that sell designer vinegars, equestrian garb and gelato.

Nonetheless, the Great Recession is felt almost everywhere around here.

“The middle class is struggling to even stay afloat but yet there is a very affluent upper class here and I know — and God knows — there is a lot of people who have barely enough to survive,” said Richard Tomey, street outreach worker for Goodwill Industries, which runs the town’s homeless shelter.

The Father Fred Foundation, a Christian charity in Traverse City, reports a 41 percent increase in visits since last year from people needing help keeping their utilities on.

Nothing can replace LIHEAP, says Martie Manty, the foundation’s executive director. “Leaning on the nonprofit sector is not very realistic because the nonprofits are dependent on the community and the community of donors is stretched,” she said in an interview.

In a state where 36 percent of kids have no working parent, the prospect of such a cut is so disturbing that even conservative Republican Gov. Rick Snyder has called on Congress to maintain funding for LIHEAP.

“Otherwise Michigan would have to drastically reduce either the number of recipients or the level of assistance … which would be incredibly challenging as Michigan works to turn around its beat-up economy,” Sara Wurfel, a spokeswoman for Snyder, told Salon.

And that’s the good news, if there is any. Obama’s budget cuts to the LIHEAP program are so severe that even conservative Republicans oppose them.

Cold kids, sick kids

In the basement of Traverse City’s Trinity Lutheran Church, where people gathered for free meals — cool pizza, canned green beans and peaches — the LIHEAP program is well-known

One woman, whom I will call “Nan,” said she had received about $800 from LIHEAP to fill the heating oil tank at her home. (Nan asked that her real name not be used because she lives in a small town.)

“It was so cold that frost was on the inside of the windows and I couldn’t turn the heat on because [the tank] was empty,” Nan said. She spent three weeks last November and December in a frigid house with her husband, four children between 8 and 19, and her daughter’s fiance.