House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he won’t call Congress back into session early to fast-track emergency funding for hurricane victims, arguing that there’s no rush since “it takes a while to calculate the actual damages.”
“We’ll be back in session immediately after the election,” he said in an interview with “Fox News Sunday.”
“That’s 30 days from now. The thing about these hurricanes and disasters of this magnitude is it takes a while to calculate the actual damages, and the states are going to need some time to do that,” he continued.
Members of Congress left Capitol Hill late last month to focus on campaigning in their home states. They are scheduled to return on Nov. 12, a week after Election Day.
President Joe Biden had asked lawmakers to hasten the approval of about $1.6 billion in federal funding towards the Small Business Administration’s disaster loan program, which Biden said will run out of funding in weeks.
His request follows Hurricane Helene causing widespread destruction in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and Georgia. A second major storm, Milton, was forecast Monday to hit Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm this week.
“I warned the Congress of this potential shortfall even before Hurricane Helene landed on America’s shores,” Biden said in a statement on Friday. “I requested more funding for SBA multiple times over the past several months, and most recently, my Administration underscored that request as you prepared a continuing resolution to fund the Government.”
Johnson, who in his interview called the federal government’s handling of Helene a “massive failure,” insisted that there was ample time before the storm hit to bolster federal funds.
He further noted that Congress had given the Federal Emergency Management Agency $20 million before Helene to address any immediate needs. Despite this funding, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week that FEMA doesn’t have enough funding to make it through the hurricane season, which ends on Nov. 30.
“We will help the people in these disaster-prone areas,” Johnson said Sunday in response to concerns that storm victims won’t have their needs met. “There shouldn’t be any concern about that at all.”