FEMA

FEMA In GOP Crosshairs For...Avoiding A Shutdown?

Brian Beutler | October 12, 2011, 2:07PM

Representative Hal Rogers (R-KY)

Congressional Republicans haven't gotten over the last government shutdown fight -- perhaps because it wasn't a clear win. They're probing FEMA's accounting practices in the last week of September, suggesting the agency manipulated its disaster relief fund to help Democrats avoid a political fight with Republicans. But FEMA officials were on the record, both publicly and in private briefings with members of both parties, about the tools they were using to keep themselves in the black through the fiscal year. So what's this really all about?

Recall that the September government shutdown fight centered on the GOP's demand that there should be matching budget cuts to make up for funneling emergency money to FEMA's disaster relief fund.

FEMA originally expected the account to be drained a few days before the end of the fiscal year on September 30. To keep its operations across the country in motion Congress was prepared to appropriate the agency $1 billion in bridge money to carry it into October...except for that pesky disagreement about offsets! Republicans insisted on paying for it by nixing a popular and effective hybrid vehicle incentive. Democrats refused, both on principle and because the specific manufacturing program on the chopping block was a successful one. Neither party was prepared to cave. But with the deadline only days away, FEMA moved aggressively to shore up its fund and announced it could get by without any emergency help from Congress and the shutdown was averted.

Republicans say something fishy was going on.

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Hurricane Irene

Obama Asks Congress For $500M In Disaster Relief, Cantor Does Not Object

Susan Crabtree | September 10, 2011, 9:48AM

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA)

The White House late Friday afternoon sent its request to Congress for $500 million in immediate relief to help the victims of Hurricane Irene and other recent disasters and avoid running out of response funds before the end of the month.

The request was just a small portion of the total $5.1 billion the President asked for in order to fill the coffers of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has become so strained for funds that it has put longer-term building projects on hold in order to ensure enough money remains for victims of Irene.

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Harry Reid

Reid Seeks To Call GOP Bluff By Pushing Clean Emergency Disaster Relief Bill

Brian Beutler | September 7, 2011, 3:22PM

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)

Sensing an advantage after some Republicans claimed disaster relief funding should be offset with cuts to other programs, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will hold a vote on a clean, stand-alone, $6 billion disaster relief bill.

"We need to get this relief funding to the American people as quickly as we can, and we're going to do that -- I'm going to bring a free-standing bill, and we're going to have a chance to vote on it," Reid told reporters at his weekly Capitol briefing Wednesday. "Some of my Republican colleagues are trying to -- I was going to say something that was vulgar and I'm not going to do that -- are trying to cater to the Tea Party by holding up relief efforts."

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Polls

Rasmussen Poll: Offsetting Disaster Aid With Cuts Not Such A Bad Idea

Kyle Leighton | September 7, 2011, 10:20AM

Hey, if a hurricane hits another part of the country, that's not your problem, right? Apparently, that view is more widely held than one might think.

In the days before Hurricane Irene ravaged the east coast, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) floated the idea that disaster aid from the federal government should be offset with spending cuts in a similar way to the GOP demands on the debt ceiling deal. The idea, though pretty consistent orthodoxy from Cantor, was loudly criticized, but Cantor doubled down. And a new poll out on Wednesday from Rasmussen shows a surprising amount of support for that very position.

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Hurricane Irene

Hurricane Eric: Democrats See Opening In Cantor's Disaster Aid Offset Talk

Evan McMorris-Santoro | September 2, 2011, 6:26AM

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA)

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's requirement that new disaster relief spending be funded with spending cuts has left members of his party open to attack, Democrats say, and they don't plan to waste the opportunity.

This week, the DCCC called on 25 East Coast Republican members to either stand with Cantor's call for offset disaster spending or publicly oppose it. In areas still drying out from Hurricane Irene and repairing the damage from the East Coast earthquake that preceded it, Democrats think the suggestion that federal aid should be used as another budget cut bargaining chip will not sit well with voters.

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Nan Hayworth

GOP Freshman Under Fire For Demanding Offsets For Disaster Relief In Her Own District

Brian Beutler | September 1, 2011, 9:39AM

Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-NY)

This isn't the sort of headline and lead paragraph you want to read in the local paper if you're a freshman House member in a marginal district: "Hayworth seeking to withhold disaster money unless it is offset by budget cuts: Only days after a record-setting storm destroyed her district, Rep. Nan Hayworth and her House colleagues threatened to withhold disaster money if lawmakers don't cut additional spending from the federal budget."

But that's exactly what the New York freshman woke up to this morning after saying she would only vote to replenish FEMA's disaster relief fund if the money is offset with spending cuts elsewhere in the budget, according to the paper. Her constituents, and officials in her district, don't want to hear about conditions -- even Republicans.

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FEMA

Ex-FEMA Official On The Risks Of Offsetting Disaster Aid

Brian Beutler | September 1, 2011, 6:15AM

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA)

Faced with growing criticism Tuesday, including from members of his own party, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) appeared to soften, slightly, his general view that federal disaster relief should be offset with equal or greater budget cuts.

He told the Richmond Times-Dispatch, that relief funds would not get bogged down in the sort of protracted budget fight that has dominated Congressional politics all year. His spokesman Brad Dayspring, in a statement to several reporters, echoed this. "People and families affected by these disasters will certainly get what they need from their federal government," he said. "The goal should be to find ways to pay for what is needed or to find offsets whenever possible, that is the responsible thing to do. Clearly when disasters and emergencies happen, people expect their government to treat them as national priorities and respond properly. People also expect their government to spend their dollars wisely, and to make efforts to prioritize and save when possible."

That will come as welcome news to victims and FEMA alike, if it turns out that they need Congress to pass emergency legislation in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene.

Mark Merritt, a former senior FEMA official in the Clinton administration said these kinds of budget impasses can be a big drag in a disaster management situation.

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Eric Cantor

Cantor: Hurricane Disaster Relief Will Have To Be Offset With Program Cuts (VIDEO)

Brian Beutler | August 29, 2011, 12:19PM

As expected, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) will try to see to it that federal disaster aid to regions damaged by Hurricane Irene be offset by concomitant cuts to other federal programs.

"Yes there's a federal role, yes we're going to find the money -- we're just going to need to make sure that there are savings elsewhere to continue to do so," Cantor told Fox News on Monday.

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Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann's Hurricane Irene Joke (VIDEO)

Evan McMorris-Santoro | August 29, 2011, 11:28AM

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN)

While much of the eastern seaboard dries out from Hurricane Irene, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has found herself in hot water over the claim she made in Florida over the weekend that the storm and last week's historic earthquake were sent by God to wake up politicians in Washington to the views of the tea party.

Bachmann's campaign says the whole thing was a joke, and that's certainly how CNN played it this morning.

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Alan Krueger

Obama Taps Krueger As Top Economic Adviser

Susan Crabtree | August 29, 2011, 11:18AM

Alan Krueger

President Barack Obama Monday announced his selection of Princeton economist Alan Krueger as his choice to succeed Austan Goolsbee as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Krueger served as the top economist at the Treasury Department during the first two years of Obama's presidency and previously as Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the Labor Department during the Clinton administration.

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Michele Bachmann

Bachmann Campaign: Bachmann Spoke 'In Jest' When She Said God Was Communicating Via Earthquakes And Hurricanes

Evan McMorris-Santoro | August 29, 2011, 9:44AM

Michele Bachmann

Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-MN) presidential campaign says critics are making much ado about nothing when it comes to her viral quote stating last week's East Coast earthquake and hurricane was a message from God to overspending DC politicians.

"Obviously she was saying it in jest," campaign spokesperson Alice Stewart told TPM in a statement.

The quote, made by Bachmann at a Florida campaign rally over the weekend, is making headlines across the Internet and TV.

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Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann: Earthquake, Irene Were A Wake Up Call From God For Politicians

Evan McMorris-Santoro | August 29, 2011, 8:26AM

Michele Bachmann

For someone who began her political career mixing fundamentalist religion and public policy, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has done a decent job keeping questions about her faith at bay during her presidential campaign.

Until now.

Speaking to a crowd in Florida over the weekend, Bachmann said the historic earthquake and massive hurricane that rocked the East Coast last week was a message that God is upset with the way politicians in Washington have been doing things. The interview with the St. Petersburg Times grabbed the quote:

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Hurricane Irene

Why Republicans Might Demand Hurricane Relief Be Paid For With More Program Cuts

Brian Beutler | August 29, 2011, 6:15AM

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA)

When a massive tornado obliterated the town of Joplin, Missouri earlier this year, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) told reporters that if the disaster ultimately required the government to step in and provide aid, it would have to be offset by cutting spending on other federal programs.

"If there is support for a supplemental, it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental," he said, using the anodyne language of budget policy.

Three months later, when a modest earthquake struck the town of Mineral, Virginia in his own district, and caused minor, but widespread damage along the eastern seaboard, Cantor upheld the standard. Congress, he said, "will find the monies" to help victims, but that "those monies will be offset with appropriate savings or cost-cutting elsewhere."

Now, in the wake of Hurricane Irene -- a much costlier natural disaster -- Cantor may make the same demand, which could touch off a bitter fight on Capitol Hill.

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