WASHINGTON — The Biden administration’s request for nearly $100 billion in natural disaster response and recovery funding is on track to sail through the U.S. Senate after both Republicans and Democrats expressed strong support during a Wednesday hearing.
Members of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, however, voiced concerns with how the federal government prepares for and responds to natural disasters, especially as they become more frequent and more severe.
“We’ve all got to be thinking about how we can address what I think is a disaster response system that is not meeting the current state of affairs,” Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said.
The federal departments and agencies responsible for natural disaster response and recovery efforts are struggling and overwhelmed, she said.
“Instead of building back better, it’s building back substantially similar,” Murkowski said. “And if you’re being threatened by coastal erosion, where you know the disaster next year is just going to be worse than what you had last year, it doesn’t make anybody feel secure in their homes.”
The three-hour hearing mostly focused on how the Agriculture Department, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Small Business Administration and Transportation Department have handled damage from natural disasters during the last couple of years.
Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which affected Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, were a central part of the hearing.
But lawmakers also talked about tornadoes, mudslides, the Maui wildfires and other natural disasters that have ravaged communities throughout the country.
Distressed farmers, rural communities
Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff urged the committee to approve an emergency spending bill this year that would deal with damage sustained by farmers, “who are in acute distress.”
Hurricane Helene, he said, harmed more than 1.5 million acres of timberland and caused widespread destruction to poultry, cotton, cattle, blueberries, pecans, peanuts, tobacco, vegetables, citrus and soybeans.
“The numbers are staggering, but this isn’t about numbers,” Ossoff said. “It’s about families and rural communities. And without our help, the simple fact is that many of these family farms will fold and they may fold soon.
“They’re staring at devastated farmland and orchards. They’re deep in the red and they’re under immense stress. If they go under, our rural communities go under, the local tax base funding schools and infrastructure is destroyed and the rural way of life in Georgia risks disappearing altogether.”
North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis detailed the impact the hurricane had on his home state, saying there were 102 deaths, 151 homes destroyed and 500,000 businesses affected in disaster-declared areas. There were 5,000 miles of roads, 163 water and sewer systems and 20,000 farms damaged, he said.
Tillis, who previously lived in states accustomed to hurricane damage, like Florida and Louisiana, said the destruction in North Carolina was unlike anything he’d experienced.
“We’ve got to react differently to storms,” Tillis testified. “This may be the first, but it won’t be the last, like we’ve seen in North Carolina. And we owe it to the American people to be ready to do better.”
Climate change
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told lawmakers the federal government must come to terms with the impact climate change has on natural disasters as it prepares for the future.
“Weather events that were previously deemed once in a century are coming along every few years,” Buttigieg said. “It is not a fluke. It is not a coincidence. And most importantly, it is not going to go away.
“We need adequate and sustained funding to make sure our communities have what they need to rebuild roads and bridges, to make them more resilient in the face of extreme weather and other disasters, and to help people return to normal life as quickly as possible.”
Several senators on the panel, including Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran and North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven, both Republicans, brought up the impact drought has had on their states and the need for natural disaster programs to alleviate the effect on farmers.
“Drought is this depressing thing that weighs on a farmer every day,” Moran said. “I’ve been on the Ag Committee or the Ag Appropriations subcommittee all of my time here, and this is as dire a circumstance that I can see in my time in trying to address the saving of rural America.”
Congress, he said, should give the USDA direction about when and how it can spend disaster funding on drought-related issues.
Hoeven said 48 states had reported droughts to some degree this year and urged the USDA to work with Congress to figure out solutions.
“Everybody knows about the hurricanes and the disasters and all that; you see it on television and everything else. But (drought is) the rest of the story that has really put our farmers and ranchers up against it,” Hoeven said. “So the key here is that we not only provide this disaster assistance, but you work with us, that USDA works with us, so that we structure it right.”
Hoeven said the United States is losing farms at a “high rate” and that the natural disasters and drought are only going to make that problem worse.
National parks and lands
The hearing also delved into whether to address natural disaster damage to national forests, national parks, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management.
Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley criticized the Biden administration’s emergency spending request, which was sent to Congress earlier this week, for not asking lawmakers to include money for those areas.
“We have a long history of caring for our public lands,” Merkley said. “It’s carried in the heart of every American, but this (request) fails to honor that responsibility.”
The recent hurricanes, he said, destroyed more than 900 miles of roads and bridges in North Carolina’s national forests, “caused dozens of landslides or rock slides on the Blue Ridge Parkway” and “wiped out or damaged more than 40 trestle bridges on the rails-to-trails Virginia Creeper Trail.”
That damage, which amounts to about $10 billion, according to Merkley, could be addressed if lawmakers choose to put it in their natural disaster supplemental bill, which is likely to be compiled in the days and weeks ahead.
Possibly more in aid
While the White House can request funding from Congress, only lawmakers have the constitutional authority to approve federal spending.
Members can write the emergency spending bill to whatever amount they choose. They can also provide clarity or new instructions for how the federal government prepares for and responds to national disasters.
Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., told States Newsroom after the hearing ended the committee is discussing whether to plus up the nearly $100 billion natural disaster emergency spending request from the White House.
• Jennifer Shutt covers the nation’s capital as a senior reporter for States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization. Her coverage areas include congressional policy, politics and legal challenges with a focus on health care, unemployment, housing and aid to families. This article originally appeared online at alaskabeacon.com. Alaska Beacon, an affiliate of States Newsroom, is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government.
