House and Senate clash over FEMA funding
KSNV coverage of a possible government shutdown over funding emergency disaster relief, Sept. 20, 2011.
Harry Reid
Dean Heller
Sun coverage
There is a list floating around Congress, hundreds of entries long, of all the infrastructure projects in need of immediate attention that have been halted because the federal government can’t decide how to fund emergency disaster relief.
Nevada doesn’t have a single item listed on it.
But both of Nevada’s senators are voting to put the government’s full financial weight behind emergency disaster relief, without quibbling about offsets.
The standoff over how to fund the Federal Emergency Management Agency, more commonly known by its acronym FEMA, is pitting the House and Senate against each other so bitterly that it’s threatening to cause another government shutdown.
FEMA funding is tied to the annual budget resolution, a measure to fund the government for the coming fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.
But the House and Senate disagree over how much money should be afforded the agency: the House wants to spend $3.7 billion — enough to fund FEMA for about six weeks — while the Senate is going for $6.9 billion.
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called the House’s proposal “a pittance” and “very short-sighted.”
Lawmakers estimate current FEMA disaster relief efforts — which include record wildfires in Texas, flooding along the East Coast and in the Midwest, and continuing tornado relief for especially hard-hit communities like Joplin, Mo. — will take at least another year.
“The money that they are talking about in the House bill will fund FEMA for just a few weeks, not months; it certainly doesn’t go into next year,” Reid said.
The dispute between the House and the Senate can be traced back to late August, when D.C. was shaken by a very rare earthquake. The epicenter was in Virginia, the home state of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.
Cantor said that if the government wanted to provide emergency funding, they’d have to offset it elsewhere in the budget.
That really turned precedent on its head. To date, in the case of emergencies, the government has typically authorized spending emergency funds at the outset and done the accounting later.
Democrats say there’s little reason to reverse that precedent, because even if the government is in a deficit crisis, its already provided for some of the funds.
There are extra funds for the Army Corps of Engineers and Community Development Block Grants, Reid told reporters today. Much of the gap between the House’s number and the Senate’s comes from spending classified under such programs, which are funds the government should be able to tap, Democrats argued.
But the key point that Reid and other Democrats are stressing is that disasters are too frequent and the damage too widespread to just shrug off the government’s responsibility to step in.
Ten Republicans in the Senate, so far, have agreed with them. The list includes Nevada Sen. Dean Heller. Still, upcoming procedural steps suggest past votes are no guarantee that all will hold the line.
When he receives the budget resolution from the House, Reid intends to swap out the House’s language on FEMA funding (the $3.7 billion version) with the language the Senate already passed (the $6.9 billion version). It will then be up to the Senate to vote again.
Heller told the Sun on Tuesday that Reid can likely count on his vote.
“My concern is with wildfires, earthquakes, flash flooding...I worry about these things and want to make sure Nevada’s always in a position to be protected,” Heller said. “I would anticipate that my vote won’t change.”
Other Republicans aren’t as sure.
Reid must retain seven Republicans to clear a filibuster-proof hurdle; should the bill pass, it would then go back to the House, where Cantor, House Speaker John Boehner and other House Republicans would then be presented with a devil’s dilemma.
If they vote for the bill, they lose this round of the spending standoff; if they vote against it, their vote all but guarantees FEMA funding will be suspended — potentially along with the rest of the government. (FEMA actually runs out of money a few days before the government goes dark at midnight on Oct. 1.)
On Tuesday, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate were arguing about whether the FEMA dispute really meant the stakes were as high as shutdown.
Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell dismissed the idea.
“There won’t be a government shutdown,” said McConnell, whose definition of “appropriate” is along the lines of the House’s smaller proposal. He voted against the $6.9 billion FEMA funding measure that passed last week.
“Congress always responds appropriately to disasters,” he said.
But Reid didn’t seem so sure.
“I heard reports that Sen. McConnell said there will be no shutdown. I’m not that sure,” Reid said. “I not that sure, because the Tea Party-driven House of Representatives has been so unreasonable in the past. I don’t know why they should suddenly be reasonable.”
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