Bush adds $887m in disaster relief
Published: October 9, 2004
The White House agreed to tack on $887 million in hurricane aid for Florida and the Southeast as Congress worked yesterday to put the final touches on a multibillion-dollar storm and drought disaster package.
The package would now include $11.9 billion for hurricane relief and $2.9 billion to assist farmers in the drought-plagued Plains. Congress previously approved $2 billion to help Florida and neighboring states recover from four devastating hurricanes.
The House may have taken up the aid package, if a deal was reached, before its scheduled recess yesterday, and the Senate may today.
The additional $887 million would go part way toward satisfying Florida lawmakers who have stressed that the level of federal aid is not enough to cope with one of the worst natural disasters to hit the state in decades.
In a letter to congressional leaders, Joshua Bolten, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said the new money included $348 million for Agriculture Department forestry and watershed protection programs, $402 million for highway repairs, and $117 million for US Army Corps of Engineers projects to restore navigation channels and rehabilitate beaches.
The $11 billion in the original package is divided among the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Federal Highway Administration, the Small Business Administration, and others involved in recovery efforts in Florida and other Southeast states. It also includes $100 million to help Grenada, Jamaica, Haiti, and the other Caribbean nations that suffered heavy damage from the storms.
Finally, there’s $2.9 billion for farmers, primarily in the Great Plains, who are enduring a prolonged drought. Lawmakers from those states argued that disaster relief should not go primarily to Florida, a key battleground state in the November election. But unlike the hurricane money, which will add to the federal deficit, House leaders insisted that the drought money be paid for, in this case by cuts in a conservation program.
To better the odds that the emergency package would be approved before lawmakers go home to campaign, it was attached to a must-pass $32 billion spending bill for the Homeland Security Department.
But even then, there were several complications Thursday.
Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, a strong supporter of the conservation program, threatened to filibuster the final bill if he did not get a vote on the cutbacks, a move that could force the Senate to reconvene next week.
The House and Senate conferees also agreed to restore language in the homeland security bill, defying a White House veto threat, that would bar the Homeland Security Department from privatizing immigration personnel. Democrats unsuccessfully tried to increase the $32 billion budget for homeland security, which includes $4 billion for first-responder programs and $5.1 billion for the Transportation Security Administration
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