September 1, 2023
FEMA needs more money – so the President just asked congress to add it do the budget.
I told you in this video a few weeks ago President Biden sent his supplemental budget request to congress asking for $12 billion extra for FEMA.
Well today he upped that request to $16 billion.
Why? He says because of the extraordinary costs of responding to all these catastrophes around the country like the Maui wildfires and Hurricane Idalia. Both Maui and several parts of florida are right now declared major disaster areas but those aren’t the only problems…there’s also been fires in Louisiana and flooding in Vermont. And it costs a lot of money to fix all that. Money that comes from us taxpayers.
If approved that $16 billion would go to FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund which supports victims with temporary housing, food, and money to start rebuilding what they lost it also helps the local governments repair and restore the public infrastructure. In case you missed it, I spoke with FEMA all about that recovery and the supplemental budget request in this video last week.
But – there’s a little catch. Well, there’s actually two catches. First, when Congress comes back to Washington DC next week, lawmakers will only have a few days to make a deal on this supplemental budget request and all the rest of the government spending that congress is responsible for. If they don’t the government will shut down on October 1st – and there will be no money for really anything. And the other catch is this FEMA money is also attached to a few other supplemental funding requests from the President including – more than 20 billion for Ukraine and about $4 billion for the southern border.
At this point – several key Republicans in the House are pushing back saying they won’t support any budget requests from the president if they are attached to Ukraine aid unless they get some of their demands met.
So the next few weeks are going to get interesting.
