President Donald Trump yesterday promised federal assistance to storm-ravaged parts of Texas, insisting Congress will act swiftly on a multibillion-dollar Hurricane Harvey recovery package as the government signalled current funds will be exhausted in the next few weeks.
“I think it’ll happen very quickly,” Trump said of an aid package that could rival those enacted after Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy. “It’ll go very fast.”
The president said existing disaster balances of more than $3 billion are sufficient for the immediate emergency but promised his administration will send lawmakers a request for far more to help Texas rebuild from the record storm in which catastrophic flooding has hit Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city.
“The real number, which will be many billions of dollars, will go through Congress,” Trump said at a White House news conference.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis, promised through a spokeswoman that “we will help those affected by this terrible disaster”.
The Republican-led Congress appears likely to add an immediate infusion of aid to a temporary spending bill to prevent a government shutdown October 1, though congressional aides say the larger recovery package may take more time to develop. It’s way too early to guess how much will be required with floodwaters rising in Houston, people stranded in homes and the city essentially paralysed.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster fund currently contains more than $3 billion, but FEMA yesterday said response to Harvey is “quickly drawing down” disaster balances.
The upcoming disaster aid package is yet another item for a packed September agenda in Washington that includes preventing a government shutdown, making sure the government doesn’t default on its debt obligations, and laying the groundwork for overhauling the tax code.
Vice President Mike Pence told a Houston radio station yesterday that given the “magnitude of the flooding” in the area that “it will be years coming back”. He said 22,000 people had already applied for federal aid but that as “many as a half-a-million people in Texas will be eligible for and applying for financial disaster assistance”.
“We remain very confident that with the reserves and with the support in the Congress, we’ll have the resources that we need,” Pence told KHOU radio.