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President Biden sent a formal request to Congress Monday for just over $98 billion in replenished disaster relief funds to help Americans reeling from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, as his administration remains under fire over allegations that federal responders were told to skip houses with campaign signs backing Donald Trump.
Biden’s request features $40 billion in funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund — after an agency supervisor claimed that avoiding households supportive of the 45th president was a widespread practice in the hurricane-hit states of North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida.
“The Congress has previously responded on a bipartisan basis to support communities in the wake of natural disasters,” Biden, 81, wrote in a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) Monday.
“My Administration will be with those affected until the job is done.”
Of particular focus for Biden is the Small Business Administration’s disaster loan program, which ran dry of funding, according to an Oct. 15 announcement from the agency.
Biden is seeking $2 billion for the SBA’s disaster loan program. More than 10,000 loan offers have been put on ice amid SBA’s exhausted funds.
Other funds sought include $24 billion for the Department of Agriculture’s programs that deal with the ramifications of natural disasters in the farming sector and $12 billion for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and $8 billion for the Department of Transportation — all related to disaster relief.
Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, outlined the request in a memo.
“The last time Congress passed a comprehensive disaster package was in December 2022 as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act [of] 2023. Since then, numerous deadly storms and disasters have struck communities across the country and Americans are still picking up the pieces,” she wrote.
Johnson, 52, had swatted down calls for him to summon Congress back into session from its recess during the 2024 presidential election homestretch to re-up disaster relief.
Instead, he argued that such as move would be “premature” and that he wanted more specific estimates of the damage done.
Johnson also indicated that the lower chamber would address the issue during its planned return after Veterans Day on Nov. 12.
Biden’s request comes as Congress is facing a Dec. 20 deadline to avert yet another potential government shutdown.
Hurricane Helene ravaged North Carolina, Georgia and Florida in late September, with an estimated death toll of more than 200 and damage in the range of some $53 billion.
Hurricane Milton plowed through Florida early last month and is believed to have killed at least 30, according to state officials.
FEMA is currently facing backlash over revelations that its former supervisor Marn’i Washington, who has since been fired, allegedly told her subordinates to skip hurricane-batter homes that had Trump campaign signs or flags on their properties.
Specifically, she instructed her Florida-based team in a “best practices” memo to “avoid homes advertising Trump.”
She later publicly claimed that this was a widespread practice at FEMA as a means of ensuring safety among its workers. A FEMA official later corroborated her claim to The Post, describing it as an open secret.
“FEMA preaches avoidance first, and then de-escalation. This is not isolated. This is a colossal event of avoidance,” she said in an interview with the Youtube podcaster Roland Martin last week.
“Not just in the state of Florida. You will find avoidance in the Carolinas.”
Residents of Lake Placid, which had been a focal point of the FEMA scandal, later confirmed that they initially did not see FEMA relief workers in the aftermath of a tornado strike. After the scandal broke, numerous FEMA workers were spotted.
Congressional Republicans have vowed to investigate the matter — and FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell will surely face questions from the House Oversight Committee during a hearing scheduled for Tuesday.
Criswell in a statement earlier this month disavowed the “one FEMA employee” who she said acted in “clear violation of FEMA’s core values and principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation” by telling “her survivor assistance team to not go to homes with yard signs supporting President-elect Trump.”
Johnson told reporters Monday that “we’ll go to work, of course, evaluating” that request from Biden.
