Hinchey: FEMA Funding Falls Short in House Bill

Congressman Maurice Hinchey speaks out against legislation that fails to provide adequate funding for ongoing emergency disaster relief. President Obama has requested $6.9 billion in funding for FEMA to continue relief in response to natural disasters throughout the country. The bill supported by House Republicans today only provides $3.65 billion for FEMA, while doing nothing for farmers. Hinchey is continuing to fight for an up or down vote on the comprehensive, bipartisan Senate package which meets the president's request while also providing badly needed support for Department of Agriculture programs that provide emergency relief to farmers.

The text of his remarks follows:

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule, and more broadly to the manner in which the House has dealt with disaster relief funding.

This year, our country has experienced some of the worst natural disasters in a generation. The cost of Hurricane Irene alone is estimated to be over one and a half billion dollars and Tropical Storm Lee's costs are still being tallied.




Yet, despite these overwhelming needs, the disaster aid included in this bill is grossly inadequate and would not sufficiently help the millions of Americans who are recent victims of floods, hurricanes, tornados and wildfires.

My district took a one-two punch from Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee.

In Broom and Tioga counties, we've just seen the second 500-year flood in five years. Scores of homes were completely destroyed and over a hundred people are still living at an emergency shelter in Binghamton, not knowing when they'll be able return to their homes, if at all.

Major companies have been shut down because their facilities are flooded.

The total cost to rebuild the region will likely exceed 250 million dollars.

In the Hudson Valley, Hurricane Irene caused massive power outages and record flooding. In Ulster County, 60 percent of residents lost power, seven bridges were destroyed. In fact, two of those bridges were just washed away and not found.

Farmers in Ulster, Orange and Sullivan counties suffered devastating losses and because the crop insurance program remains inadequate for them, these farmers may get no assistance at all.

Ulster and Orange Counties alone have an estimated 62.5 million dollars in agriculture losses, yet the CR contains no assistance for farmers.

And just when some of these communities began rebuilding from Irene, a second round of flooding from Lee washed away much of their hard work. Now they need to start the recovery work again.

The Senate has already passed a seven billion dollar standalone disaster bill that funds the President's FEMA budget request and provides additional emergency assistance for the Department of Agriculture and other agencies that are seeing their disaster funds dwindle.

The House bill is a half job. It's playing politics with the lives of people who are desperate and are begging us to set aside games and get this done. Let's put an end to it now and take up the Senate's bill.

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Blame the teaBaggers