Turns out it wasn't a low heat bill year after all

There is a story today in the Wisconsin State Journal that blows up one of the reasons some of the Republican state legislators trotted out as why we didn't need a special session to allocate more money to help people with their heating bills this year. Some of the Republicans said we didn't need it because it had been a mild winter.

There are about 29,000 reasons in this story that make this not true. Xcel Energy has 23,000 people that are behind on their heating bills this year and that is up from 17,000 last year at this time. Alliant Energy has another 6,000 people struggling to pay their bills.

Was it that hard to see this coming for the Republican legislators? We do live in Wisconsin. A mild winter means we have a record number of days where the temperature doesn't drop below thirty degrees. Warmer yes, but you still need the heat on. Combine that with energy bills that went up thirty percent and wages that didn't go up even close to that much or at all, and you've got thousands of people that can't make up the difference.