House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday he is “alarmed and disappointed” by the Biden administration’s claims that FEMA does not have enough funds for its response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene.
Johnson’s comments come after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said FEMA is “meeting the immediate needs” of the hurricane relief efforts, but “does not have the funds to make it through the season.” This despite Mayorkas having said in July that FEMA was “tremendously prepared” to handle weather crises this year.
In an interview with Fox News, Johnson noted Congress “acted appropriately” by allocating $20 billion in immediate funding for FEMA in last month’s short-term federal funding bill in response to some “pretty ominous projections.”
But President Biden, Vice President Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas have “failed in that response,” he said, after Biden said he may ask Congress to return for an emergency session to pass a supplemental disaster aid bill.
“They are scrambling to cover their egregious errors and mistakes. And there’s an effort to blame others or blame circumstances when this is just purely a lack of leadership and response,” the speaker said.
Hurricane Helene caused devastation across the southeastern U.S. Western North Carolina was particularly hard hit, with flooding that destroyed entire towns and killed dozens of people.
The speaker also said Congress would not even be able to pass additional aid until lawmakers receive projections from state and local authorities about how much funding is needed and projections would likely not be completed until Congress is scheduled to be back in session anyway. Johnson said Congress will be prepared to act as soon as the projections are ready,
He predicted Helene could be “one of the most expensive storms that the country has ever encountered.”
“It affects at least six states — a broad swath of destruction across many, many areas — and I think that’s why it’s going to take a while to assess,” Johnson said.
Meanwhile, whistleblowers recently came forward with allegations that FEMA has mismanaged funds and left first responders waiting in hotels for deployment orders to assist North Carolinians impacted by Hurricane Helene.
The whistleblowers reached out to Representative Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.), who wrote a letter to Mayorkas asking for additional information about FEMA’s allocation of funds.
“FEMA has wasted taxpayer funds, misappropriated funds, and left other federal, state, and local responders without deployment orders on the ground. As reported and further confirmed by my office, hundreds, if not thousands of service members were deployed by the Department of Defense to North Carolina and have sat idle, waiting for FEMA. We have confirmed FEMA employees deployed, on the clock, awaiting orders in hotels. FEMA pre-disaster aid was withheld, exacerbating the emergency,” the letter says.
Gaetz demands answers from Mayorkas about whether FEMA is spending disaster relief funds on illegal immigrants.
Conservatives have raised concerns that the Biden administration could be using disaster aid funds on helping illegal immigrants at the border through the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), but the White House and DHS have dismissed these claims.
“No disaster relief funding at all was used to support migrants’ housing and services. None. At. All,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates said Friday. “In fact, the funding for communities to support migrants is directly appropriated by Congress to CBP, and is merely administered by FEMA. The funding is in no way related to FEMA’s response and recovery efforts.”