President Donald Trump said he wanted strings attached to billions of dollars in federal aid to Los Angeles County, where firestorms this year torched 16,000 homes and businesses.
But Republicans in Congress appear to have cooled on conditioning federal aid to California — which doesn’t appear on the horizon months after the Jan. 7 fires in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom requested $40 billion in disaster funding, but there’s little movement on any aid.
“Congress must receive the formal disaster aid request from the administration,” a spokesperson for House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, said in a statement to the Chronicle.
The White House declined to comment on when it might send Congress the request.
Two weeks after the fires, Trump threatened to withhold federal aid for the thousands of Los Angeles-area residents who lost their homes unless the state requires voter identification at the polls and opens the water spigot to Southern California.
Disaster aid will likely get attention from Congress when lawmakers return from district work periods on March 24, Republicans Rep Ken Calvert from Palm Desert, and Rep. Doug LaMalfa from Chico, told the Chronicle.
Calvert, the most senior California lawmaker and the only California Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, said he suspects there will need to be more than one vote on disaster aid, including one to provide additional funding to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“At some point, we’re going to have to put a little more money in FEMA, I think, because obviously the debris removal was extremely expensive,” Calvert told the newspaper.
Members of Congress from California, including all nine Republicans, signed onto a March 7 letter urging congressional leadership to provide additional assistance to Los Angeles County.
“Just as the federal government has come to the aid of communities impacted by wildfires across the western United States, tornados in the Midwest, ice storms in Texas, or hurricanes in the Southeast, we should once again support the recovery of the impacted families, businesses, and communities in Los Angeles County,” the lawmakers said.
Several projections have estimated that insured losses from the January wildfires in L.A. County could reach $30 billion or more, making it the costliest natural disaster in state history.
Several California Republicans said they want to see a clearer accounting of existing liabilities to determine how much federal money is needed.
“FEMA is going through all the numbers and identifying what the costs are, and we’re trying to determine the liability — who’s liable,” whether it’s Southern California Edison, the insurance companies or other entities, Calvert told the Chronicle.
“Right now, California is hip-shooting a number. They don’t have what amount is insured versus uninsured,” and whether Southern California Edison will have responsibility for the Eaton Fire, added Republican Rep. Darrell Issa from Escondido. “If they have primary responsibility, that’s a huge difference in the funding — literally billions of dollars. So we’re prepared to offer a bill, but to put a number on it we do need these items done.”
In January, several Republicans floated the idea of making wildfire aid for California contingent on policy changes, an idea that drew a harsh rebuke from Anaheim Republican Rep. Young Kim.
“Playing politics with people’s livelihoods is unacceptable and a slap in the face to the Southern California wildfire victims and to our brave first responders,” Kim said in a statement.— Dana Bartholomew