How Mike Johnson’s Big Decision Could Impact Helene Relief Efforts

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said on Sunday that he does not intend to call Congress out of recess to vote on emergency funding for federal agencies assisting in Hurricane Helene recovery efforts.
Johnson told Fox News Sunday’s Shannon Bream that lawmakers will be “back in session immediately after the election” to provide any funding needs for states hit hardest by the Category 4 storm that made its way through the southeastern United States late last month.
“That’s 30 days from now,” the Republican leader said. “The thing about these hurricanes and disasters at this magnitude is it takes a while to calculate the actual damages, and the states are going to need some time to do that.”
A handful of lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have asked Congress to return to Washington, D.C., before November 5 to vote on additional aid packages for Helene victims. Florida Senator Rick Scott, a Republican, said in a statement last Monday that his state is “resilient, but the response and recovery from this storm demands the full and immediate support of government at every level to get families and businesses back to normal.”
Democratic Florida Representative Jared Moskowitz has also said he would support ending recess early to pass emergency funding.
“Congress must show that it can still deliver for the American people in their hour of greatest need,” the lawmaker wrote in a statement on September 30.
The White House has asked lawmakers to pass additional funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other agencies tasked with assisting communities devastated by Helene. In a letter to congressional leadership on Friday, President Joe Biden specifically requested funding for the Small Business Administration (SBA), which he said will run out of money before lawmakers return to session as it supports small business owners recovering from the storm.
Biden did not explicitly call for lawmakers to return from recess early in order to meet the emergency funding needs.
Johnson said on Sunday that “Congress will provide” and called it “an appropriate role for the federal government” to assist in disaster relief efforts.
“You’ll have bipartisan support for that, and it will all happen in due time, and we’ll get that job done,” he added.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has said that FEMA can meet the immediate needs of Helene relief but that the agency is being stretched thin, noting that another hurricane is expected to hit western Florida sometime next week. Biden wrote in his letter on Friday to Congress that while FEMA’s “Disaster Relief Fund has the resources it requires right now to meet immediate needs, the fund does face a shortfall at the end of the year.”
“Without additional funding, FEMA would be required to forego longer-term recovery activities in favor of meeting urgent needs,” the president wrote. “The Congress should provide FEMA additional resources to avoid forcing that kind of unnecessary trade-off and to give the communities we serve the certainty of knowing that help will be ongoing, both for the short- and long-term.”
Some Republicans have blamed the Biden-Harris administration for FEMA’s shortfalls, claiming that the agency has diverted millions of dollars for services for migrants in the U.S. Federal officials have adamantly denied such claims, noting that the funding distributed by FEMA for migrant services does not come from the agency’s budget for disaster relief.
Johnson said on Sunday that while the “streams of funding are different” under FEMA, he accused the agency of losing “sight of its core mission.”
“What the American people see, and what they’re frustrated by, is that FEMA should be involved,” the House speaker said. “Their mission is to help people in times like this of natural disaster, not to be engaged in using any pool of funding from any account for resettling illegal aliens who have come across the border.”
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates told Newsweek via email on Sunday that “a wide range of leaders in both parties and from every affected state have praised the bipartisan response to Hurricane Helene.” Republican governors from several hard-hit states have thanked the federal government’s response to Helene, including South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, who said at a press conference last Tuesday that federal assistance had “been superb.”
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin also said at a press conference last week that he is “incredibly appreciative of the rapid response and the cooperation from the federal team at FEMA.” He also thanked Biden and Democratic Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine “for their support and continued coordination to provide assistance to Virginians in need” in a statement last Sunday.
Prior to heading to recess, Congress passed $20 billion for FEMA’s disaster relief funding as part of a stopgap measure intended to fund the federal government until December. The agency, however, had requested a need for $33.1 billion in the new fiscal year, which began on October 1.
The stopgap measure was passed in the House with a 341-82 vote and in the Senate with a 78-18 vote. All no votes came from Republican members in both chambers.
Debates over hurricane relief efforts come just weeks before voters will cast their ballots in the 2024 presidential election on November 5. As Republican strategist John Feehery told The New York Times in a report published Friday, the issue of disaster relief funding has often become a political debate, especially so close to a tight election.
“It’s simply too risky for Republicans to bring back members to vote on a package of spending that they haven’t even seen yet, right before the election,” Feehery said. “A partisan fight would be a disaster, but a bipartisan spendathon could deflate the base.”
According to the Associated Press, the death toll from Helene has reached 227 as of Saturday across Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and the Carolinas. It is the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Hurricane Katria in 2005.