Johnson slams door on Congress returning for disaster aid
Hurricane Milton’s rampage is not swaying House Republican leaders who oppose returning to Washington to approve billions of dollars for disaster assistance.
President Joe Biden on Thursday said lawmakers should return to Capitol Hill “immediately” from their preelection recess, echoing pleas from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers from the afflicted states.
But despite questions about the solvency of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster fund, House Speaker Mike Johnson and top appropriators insist the agency can manage just fine — for now — with the $20.3 billion that Congress freed up for it late last month. That money is for the fiscal year that ends next Sept. 30.
“To be clear: Congress will act again upon its return in November to address funding needs and ensure those impacted receive the necessary resources,” Athina Lawson, a spokesperson for Johnson, said in a statement to POLITICO’s E&E News on Thursday.
“In the meantime, the Administration needs to focus on getting the existing and sufficient disaster relief out to the millions of Americans in dire need and work to assess the extent and nature of the damage,” Lawson said. “Until the Administration does the work to provide an assessment, any action by Congress will be premature.”
The administration itself has been sending mixed messages. Asked Wednesday on CNN if Congress needs to reconvene early to address disaster aid, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, said that “FEMA has what they need right now.”
Biden has largely backed statements from FEMA officials saying the agency has the resources needed to support recovery efforts after Helene and Milton.
Even in a letter he wrote to congressional leaders on Friday, sounding the alarm about the looming disaster aid cliff and urging lawmakers to step in, Biden’s request was for action “after the Congress comes back into session on November 12th.”
Biden sounded a different theme Thursday, saying that “I think the Congress should be coming back and moving on emergency needs immediately, and they’re gonna have to come back after the election as well.” He said lawmakers should at least provide more money now for the Small Business Administration’s disaster loans program, which is also close to exhaustion after multiple calamities.
Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have stayed relatively quiet on whether Congress should reconvene before the post-election lame-duck session.
Two Senate Democratic leadership aides have said they do not expect Congress to reconvene unless there are urgent disaster needs before the election.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told reporters Wednesday that the agency is able to “support all of the needs of everyone that was impacted by Helene and Milton.”
‘Burning the remaining dollars’
Milton made landfall in Florida late Wednesday night as a Category 3 storm. With Floridians still reeling from Helene’s hit last month, forecasts of Milton’s destruction drew bipartisan concern that the storm would wallop federal disaster relief accounts.
Even before Congress allowed FEMA to tap $20.3 billion with last month’s funding stopgap, the agency had a backlog of $9 billion that it had to withhold from older rebuilding projects.
Criswell said Wednesday that FEMA has “gone through about $9 billion already” and noted that “there’s just over $11 billion in the Disaster Relief Fund.”
“I’m going to have to evaluate how quickly we’re burning the remaining dollars,” she said.
Biden spoke with Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday morning and said the administration would provide any support the state needs for a quick response and recovery.
DeSantis told Biden that state officials are assessing damage and thanked him for the federal support before and after landfall, according to a White House pool report.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), DeSantis’ former emergency management director, indicated on Fox Business on Thursday that he was concerned about FEMA’s disaster balance despite assurances from congressional leaders and the Biden administration.
“They have the funds to respond,” he said. “If there’s another hurricane, they probably won’t have the funds to respond, and they probably also don’t have the funds to deal with all of the reimbursement that cities and counties put out to respond and clean up during these disasters.”
Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Fla.), chair of the House State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, said he feels Congress can address disaster funding in a fiscal 2025 funding package or another funding extension later this year.
“The president of the United States says we have enough money. … If that changes, we’ll have to go back, but right now, from what I’ve seen, if the money’s there, we don’t have to come back before we have to finish the appropriations bills,” Díaz-Balart said.
He added, “Obviously if the money won’t be there all of a sudden, I’ll be the first to demand that we come back.”
‘We can pass this immediately’
Still, the calls for more urgent action are piling up.
Moskowitz has introduced two bills to provide a total of $20 billion in supplemental disaster funding for FEMA, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s disaster block grant program, and the Small Business Administration’s disaster loans program.
SBA Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman said in a statement over the weekend that her agency was likely to run out of disaster assistance loan funding “before the end of October.”
The agency said Wednesday that it had just $100 million remaining for new loans as applications for that money continue to pile up. Hours later, a group of 63 House Democrats sent a letter to Johnson calling on him to reconvene Congress this month to approve new aid, including for SBA loans.
Thursday morning, as Floridians were awakening to catastrophic damage, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), the only Republican to co-sponsor Moskowitz’s supplemental funding bill for FEMA, said she spoke with Biden about the funding request.
“Just spoke with @POTUS Biden — he’s personally ensuring FEMA doesn’t cause delays with debris removal and supports the $15B in FEMA funds specifically for hurricane victims,” she posted Thursday on the social media platform X.
“If Congress holds a special session, we can pass this immediately,” she added. “@SpeakerJohnson, let’s make it happen!”
Emma Dumain and Thomas Frank contributed to this report.