FEMA is not working out of cash for hurricane aid due to migrants : NPR

Rumors, misinformation and lies concerning the federal authorities’s response to Hurricane Helene within the southeastern United States have run rampant because the storm made landfall, particularly round funding for the Federal Emergency Administration Company.

The claims have change into so widespread that FEMA arrange a response web page to debunk many falsehoods round how catastrophe funding works and what the company’s response has been.

As of Sunday, FEMA says it has supplied greater than $137 million in help to 6 states within the southeast, together with 7,000 federal personnel, almost 15 million meals, 14 million liters of water, 157 mills and greater than half 1,000,000 tarps.

The company additionally says greater than 3,000 North Carolina residents have been rescued or supported by greater than 1,200 city search and rescue personnel, with restoration efforts aided by Nationwide Guard and active-duty troops. North Carolina has additionally obtained $100 million in federal transportation funds to rebuild roads and bridges washed out by the storm.

Republicans, particularly former President Donald Trump, have sought to wield the storm as a political device in opposition to Vice President Harris with lower than a month to go earlier than Election Day. Trump has repeatedly attacked Harris and President Biden as doing a “bad job” dealing with the storm’s aftermath with out specifics, as an alternative utilizing deceptive math to complain about immigration and international help.

“They’re offering them $750 to people whose homes have been washed away,” Trump stated Saturday at a rally in Butler, Pa. “And yet we send tens of billions of dollars to foreign countries that most people have never heard of. They’re offering them $750. They’ve been destroyed. These people have been destroyed.”

The $750 Trump refers to is what’s referred to as Severe Wants Help, an preliminary direct aid cost supposed to assist cowl emergency provides like meals, water, child components and different fundamentals

The intense wants help is one in every of many adjustments to FEMA’s particular person help applications that took impact earlier this 12 months, together with displacement help to cowl instant housing wants whereas residents type out long-term choices. FEMA help additionally covers storm-related injury to properties and private property.

Is FEMA working out of cash?

One other fashionable chorus that has gained traction on the suitable in latest days is the declare that FEMA has no cash for hurricane restoration due to cash spent on migrants, one thing that’s not true.

The cash used within the aftermath of Helene and different main disasters shouldn’t be a part of FEMA’s working funds, however as an alternative comes from the Catastrophe Aid Fund, which is appropriated by Congress.

Final week, Homeland Safety Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas reportedly stated the company “does not have the funds to make it through” the remainder of hurricane season.

FEMA is required to share month-to-month standing stories on the DRF, and earlier than the tip of the fiscal 12 months the company needed to implement “Immediate Needs Funding” that places a pause on a few of the company’s spending that’s not tied to lifesaving and life-sustaining efforts when the wants of the DRF could possibly be greater than the remaining stability.

Probably the most latest report that runs via August confirmed a projected deficit by the tip of September — and that’s earlier than Helene made landfall.

October is the beginning of the federal authorities’s fiscal 12 months, and a stopgap spending measure permitted by lawmakers final month replenished the DRF finally 12 months’s baseline degree of $20 billion, although a few of that cash is reserved for ongoing restoration efforts from earlier disasters and initiatives to mitigate future impacts.

Might FEMA’s Catastrophe Aid Fund get more cash quickly?

The DRF is usually thought of the primary line of response whereas FEMA and different companies assess the injury and wishes associated to a particular catastrophe. As soon as that data is compiled, the president usually sends a proper request to Congress for supplemental appropriations to supply extra carefully tailor-made funding and applications for any given response.

Congress has not but handed supplemental funding for different disasters that occurred earlier within the 12 months, a lot to the frustration of members in communities recovering from floods, fires and different main occasions. Even when they’d permitted the present funding request, the cash wouldn’t have been directed to Helene aid because the storm injury occurred after Congress left Washington on the finish of September.

Lawmakers might return to Washington to attempt to move extra help however they’re ready for the White Home to ship an up to date funding request. President Biden wrote a letter to Congress final week that stated FEMA “has the resources needed for the immediate emergency response phase.”

Biden went on to say an up to date request is on its approach.

“My Administration will keep the Congress apprised of efforts to assess the full resource requirements associated with Hurricane Helene, including for long-term rebuilding and resilience efforts, as those estimates become available,” he wrote.

One persevering with decision proposed within the Home final month would have included a further $10 billion for the fund, however that model failed as a result of it was tied to a controversial Republican-backed election invoice that targeted on additional cracking down on already-illegal non-citizen voting.

Trump makes use of immigration assaults to make extra false claims

An August report from the Division of Homeland Safety Inspector Normal argues that billions of {dollars} earmarked for disasters that occurred greater than a decade in the past could possibly be returned to the Catastrophe Aid Fund.

However the false argument from Trump and different Republicans has been that the Biden administration diverted catastrophe cash to maintain migrants.

“They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season,” Trump stated in Michigan final week.

Non-citizens can’t vote within the election, and no catastrophe funds have been diverted. As an alternative, Trump and his allies are referring to the Shelter and Providers Program that noticed FEMA disseminate tons of of tens of millions in grants from Customs and Border Safety to municipalities that noticed an inflow of migrants.

That program was a separate funding supply with a separate objective protecting separate years – and never related to the present hurricane restoration efforts.

In the meantime, Republican Home Speaker Mike Johnson stated Sunday he had no plans to carry lawmakers again from recess earlier than the election to deal with requests for added catastrophe aid as Hurricane Milton approaches the Florida coast as a Class 5 storm.