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House Approves $36.5 Billion Hurricane and Wildfire Aid Package

The aid package would help Puerto Rico’s financially beleaguered government avoid running out of cash in the wake of Hurricane Maria.Credit...Lucas Jackson/Reuters

WASHINGTON — The House, dismissing concern for the rising cost, approved a $36.5 billion aid package on Thursday that would provide hurricane and wildfire relief funding while bailing out the financially troubled National Flood Insurance Program.

The aid package would also help Puerto Rico’s financially beleaguered government avoid running out of cash in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Conditions there remain dire, with most of the island still without power three weeks after the storm hit.

The House approved the bill 353 to 69, with all of the no votes coming from Republicans.

The disaster package, now awaiting consideration in the Senate, would be the second installment of aid money that Congress has approved in response to this year’s hurricanes, after a $15.3 billion relief measure in September. With the tab now more than $50 billion, lawmakers warn that much more money will still be needed. Lawmakers from Texas and Florida have already outlined expansive requests, adding up to tens of billions of dollars in total. And the United States Virgin Islands delegate to the House, Stacey Plaskett, a Democrat, complained that the package lacked aid needed by her devastated territory.

“I know people are concerned that not every state’s need is met, but this is, I think, a good step in the right direction,” said Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, Republican of New Jersey and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, who urged his colleagues to vote for the bill “so we can get this money out the door as quickly as possible.”

The governor of the Virgin Islands, Kenneth E. Mapp, wrote to congressional leaders on Thursday to request $5.5 billion of disaster relief for the United States territory, a group of islands east of Puerto Rico that was raked by Hurricanes Irma and Maria.

“We are at the U.S. government’s mercy,” the governor said, describing destroyed hospitals, schools and fire stations, two heavily damaged airport terminals, and an electrical grid that was a total loss. He said the greatest share of the aid would be put toward housing, because most homes on the islands had been “destroyed or substantially damaged,” along with the hotels and resorts at the heart of their economy.

The White House had submitted a request to Congress last week for a new disaster relief package topping $29 billion. But hours before the House vote on Thursday, President Trump offered a warning on Twitter:

The drumbeat of requests for disaster relief is creating new financial demands for the federal government, which already spends far more money than it takes in. The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the deficit for the 2017 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, was $668 billion, an increase of $82 billion from the previous year.

As that money flows, Republicans are laying the groundwork for a tax bill that could add as much as $1.5 trillion to the deficit over a decade. The Senate is set to vote next week on a budget blueprint that would protect a tax cut of that magnitude from a filibuster and allow it to pass with Republican votes only.

While conservative Republicans have in the past demanded spending cuts to go in tandem with disaster relief, this time around, the Trump administration and congressional leaders have shown an eagerness to provide aid without paring back spending in other areas. Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation, called on House members to vote down the measure, labeling the flood insurance bailout as “irresponsible.”

More than two-thirds of House Republicans ended up voting for the bill, even though it lacked offsetting cuts.

“That’s the ‘eat your spinach’ part,” said Representative Dave Brat, Republican of Virginia, who made clear that he wished lawmakers would, in fact, eat their spinach.

Representative Mark Walker, Republican of North Carolina and the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, expressed frustration with the lack of discussion about finding offsetting spending cuts.

“Republicans control the White House and Congress, and we cannot ignore or further enable our debt crisis,” he wrote in a letter to colleagues this week, taking issue with a disaster aid package that he suggested was being rushed through the House.

In an apparent display of how Republicans’ priorities seem to have changed, Mr. Walker quoted Vice President Mike Pence from his days as a congressman. “Congress must ensure that a catastrophe of nature does not become a catastrophe of debt for our children and grandchildren,” Mr. Pence warned after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Even Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina and chairman of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, which has been a disruptive force in the past, was resigned to the disaster aid bill sailing through the House, though he bristled at the bailout of the flood insurance program.

Mr. Meadows said dealing with deficits remained an issue for lawmakers to address, “but obviously it pales in comparison to getting relief to Puerto Rico and Florida.”

The House bill would provide more funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has been burning through money since the hurricanes, Harvey, Irma and Maria.

“That pipeline is getting empty quick, so we really need to move now to get that pipeline replenished,” said Representative Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas, adding that he expected a “bigger, more long-term recovery package” once the needs of Texas and other places become clear.

The bill would provide $577 million to respond to wildfires. It would also make $4.9 billion in loans available to hurricane-ravaged areas including Puerto Rico so its government does not run out of money. In a recent letter to congressional leaders, Puerto Rico’s governor, Ricardo A. Rosselló, warned of facing “unsustainable cash shortfalls,” saying that the island’s economy had “ground to a near standstill.”

The aid package would also provide a reprieve to the National Flood Insurance Program, which is facing an influx of claims stemming from the hurricanes. Even before this year’s storms, the program was deep in debt to the Treasury, and it has now reached its $30.4 billion borrowing limit, according to FEMA.

The bill would erase $16 billion owed by the program. But it does not include longer-term policy changes that the White House backed last week when it asked Congress to wipe away that debt. Without those changes, the program is likely to burn through its next allocation and have no choice but to borrow from the taxpayers again.

The package must still be passed by the Senate, which is scheduled to return from a weeklong recess next week.

Mary Williams Walsh contributed reporting from New York.

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: With $36.5 Billion, House Approves Another Installment for Disaster Relief. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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