The Biden administration on Monday despatched Congress a roughly $100 billion emergency funding request to rebuild communities hit by hurricanes Helene and Milton, together with a slew of different disasters nationwide.
Prime lawmakers plan to spend the subsequent few weeks finalizing a bipartisan invoice that fulfills no less than a few of that request, with a objective of ultimate passage someday between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Since Congress additionally faces a authorities shutdown deadline on Dec. 20, it’s attainable catastrophe help will get tied right into a spending patch or broader funding bundle.
Apart from $40 billion to refill FEMA’s catastrophe aid fund, the White Home is in search of emergency funding for greater than a dozen different federal companies that deal with housing assist, transportation infrastructure, help to farmers, diet help, well being companies and enhancements to water methods. The request additionally particulars funding for group improvement, colleges, wildland firefighter pay and employment assist for catastrophe survivors.
Speaker Mike Johnson mentioned Monday that lawmakers will now “go to work” evaluating the catastrophe help request, noting that estimating restoration prices is “a deliberate course of.”
“And we’re going to verify we ship for the hurricane victims and the folks that have suffered from that,” the speaker added.
White Home funds director Shalanda Younger mentioned the Biden administration expects to get a catastrophe help bundle enacted “with robust bipartisan and bicameral assist,” and that she is “not stunned” Johnson has “given individuals consolation that funding is on the best way, and there is not any room for politics in catastrophe aid.”
So long as Congress clears catastrophe help earlier than the December funding deadline, FEMA estimates that the nation’s catastrophe aid fund can have sufficient money to maintain funding restoration work, assuming no giant disasters strike within the meantime.
The Small Enterprise Administration’s catastrophe mortgage program, nevertheless, has been out of money for over a month. So greater than 10,000 mortgage affords are actually on pause for householders and companies making an attempt to borrow cash to restore properties or cowl working bills.
“Let me be clear, small companies want this funding — householders additionally use this funding as a vital supply of rebuilding, along with nonprofits and renters,” Younger mentioned in a information briefing. “This fund should instantly, as quickly as attainable, be replenished.”
Within the Senate final week, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) tried to cross a slender invoice to refill the Small Enterprise Administration’s catastrophe mortgage program. However Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) objected, insisting on an modification to offset the price by clawing again funding from local weather packages that Democrats enacted by means of the Inflation Discount Act.
Congress hasn’t cleared a complete catastrophe help bundle since 2022. Within the meantime, congressional Republicans have regularly ignored the Biden administration’s requests for catastrophe help. That features a $4 billion proposal final summer season in search of funding to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, in addition to a $56 billion request last year that additionally sought emergency money for different priorities, together with colleges, little one care suppliers and diet help.
Olivia Beavers contributed to this report.
