With President Joe Biden’s $100 billion emergency funding request for hurricane relief sitting in limbo, House Republicans have become fixated on how the Federal Emergency Management Agency is run.
“I’m not sure they have a funding problem, but they might have a mission problem,” Utah Rep. Celeste Maloy told NOTUS about FEMA. “They’re doing things they shouldn’t be doing. I’d rather say, ‘Use the dollars for what we’ve told you to use them for before asking for more dollars.’”
FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell said Tuesday in a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee hearing that there is less than $5 billion remaining (of the initial $20 billion appropriation) in the agency’s disaster relief fund — an amount she says will not support the “full recovery efforts and overall mission requirements through the end of the fiscal year.”
Biden asked Congress for nearly $100 billion to help cover the relief efforts from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, $40 billion of which is meant to replenish the disaster relief fund. Members from affected states in the South testified in hearings this week about the extent of recovery needed urgently in some of the most hit areas.
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There’s agreement across the aisle that there shouldn’t be hold up getting FEMA the money it needs to respond to the best of its ability, but faced with Biden’s emergency request, Republicans are first calling for major changes at the agency.
Outside of the disaster relief fund, Congress appropriates funds for other programs administered by FEMA, including one that supports Customs and Border Patrol with noncitizen migrants, which Republicans have taken issue with.
They’re already teeing up possible cuts.
Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves pressed Criswell in the Tuesday hearing, arguing that as it stands, noncitizen migrants are eligible for “getting a plane ticket paid for, a hotel room paid for, ... healthcare, food and clothing” under the Shelter and Services Program, while there are U.S. citizens reeling from the hurricanes still in need of many of the same services.
“The Shelter and Services Program is a program that was directed by Congress for FEMA to administer,” Criswell responded.
If Republicans want to get rid of that program, they should propose a bill to do so, California Democrat Rep. John Garamendi suggested in the hearing. Some Republicans have introduced bills to reprogram FEMA’s spending.
Rep. Gary Palmer, chair of the House Republican Policy Committee, introduced a bill Tuesday to authorize the FEMA administrator to reallocate funds for other programs into the disaster relief fund. The proposal notes that FEMA has billions of dollars in frozen funds from Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, as well as unspent money stored for the COVID-19 pandemic, which could be directed to emergency needs.
Some of his co-sponsors include Reps. Byron Donalds, Scotty Perry, Don Bacon and Anna Paulina Luna.
Mississippi Rep. Mike Ezell told NOTUS that since Katrina hit his district nearly 20 years ago, there are “still multiple [FEMA] projects that have not been completed” and that he wants to review Biden’s request for additional money to see if it’ll be used for its intended purpose.
Some GOP lawmakers are calling for bigger changes.
“What is necessary is an entire cleansing of leadership [in FEMA] because they’ve lost focus,” Rep. Marc Molinaro told NOTUS. “They’ve drifted from their core mission and established priorities that are clearly not in the best interest of emergency response.”
Some Republicans also raised suspicions of political bias among the agency’s ranks following reports of a FEMA supervisor who was fired after directing employees to avoid going to homes with campaign signs of President-elect Donald Trump. (Criswell denied that there is widespread bias in the agency and confirmed that the employee has been fired and there is an ongoing investigation into it.)
“That’s unacceptable and that’s what I wanted to call the agency out on,” Rep. Aaron Bean told NOTUS. “We really need changes at FEMA because America needs confidence in that agency, and right now that confidence isn’t there.”
Democrats deny that there has been any sort of partisanship in the government’s actions.
“Anyone who comes and visits and goes on the ground in western North Carolina and actually talks to the stakeholders can see that there’s nothing partisan about the response at the federal, state and local level,” said North Carolina Rep. Wiley Nickel. “It’s been an all-hands-on-deck response that’s truly outstanding.”
And some Democrats think all the nitpicking by Republicans into FEMA’s programming is simply a ploy to stall real progress on appropriating funds before the end of the year and before the end of Biden’s term.
“Urgency is increasing, and it’s only getting worse,” Rep. Troy Carter said. “It’s ridiculous that it appears to be political gamesmanship, that they want to have people suffer for another few months until the new president is seated.”
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Calen Razor is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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