During a recent hearing in Congress, Republicans wanted answers of where the money went for FEMA and questioned the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) “backward spending priorities.”
The House Homeland Security Committee begin investigations into the allocation of FEMA funding by the DHS after their request for more funding for disaster relief and illegal migrants living in the United States.
According to a press release from the committee, “Specifically, the members condemned the Biden-Harris administration’s push for hundreds of millions of dollars every year for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to spend specifically on illegal aliens, first through the Emergency Food and Shelter Program-Humanitarian (EFSP-H), and subsequently the Shelter and Services Program (SSP).”
“You stated to media reporters that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) ‘does not have the funds, to make it through the [hurricane] season,’” Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-TN) wrote in a letter to the DHS. “If true, FEMA’s funding shortfall is extremely disconcerting as Americans impacted by Hurricane Helene and potentially by Hurricane Milton face dire circumstances while the Biden-Harris administration may have unwisely and irresponsibly focused funding requests for other FEMA activities.”
DHS Secretary Mayorkas claimed that FEMA did not have the funding needed to make it through a hurricane season. “We have the immediate needs right now. On a continuing resolution, we have funds, but that is not a stable source of supply if you will,” he said. “This is a multibillion-dollar, multiyear recovery.”
According to Republican lawmakers, Congress “consistently met or exceeded, through supplemental appropriations, the President’s budget requests for disaster relief,” supplying $61.2 billion in funding for 2023 and 2024.
In the letter to the DHS, “The Committee, however, is troubled that the Department and FEMA may not have properly apprised Congress of its need for additional disaster relief funds while simultaneously requesting large sums of monies to fund FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program (SSP), a grant program to fund nonfederal entities for shelter and services provided to migrants encountered by the Department, including illegal aliens.”
Republicans are claiming that over $1.4 billion has been used by FEMA via the SSP for humanitarian aid. “Meanwhile, $344 million, an only slightly greater amount, has been spent on federal assistance for the communities impacted by Hurricane Helene.”
“While the Committee understands that there is no intermingling of funds between the DRF and SSP, the Department’s priorities for limited resources provided by taxpayers to the Department should first and foremost serve Americans,” Republicans strongly asserted in the letter.
GOP committee members are launching an investigation and seeking related documents and communications from DHS and FEMA within 10 days to see just how all this money was spent or misused.