House Republicans Are Calling For Big Changes at FEMA

With Joe Biden’s $100 billion emergency funding request pending, Republicans are focused on the agency as a whole.

Hurricane Helene FEMA Threats
Makiya Seminera/AP

With President Joe Biden’s $100 billion emergency funding request for hurricane relief sitting in limbo, House Republicans have become fixated on how the Federal Emergency Management Agency is run.

“I’m not sure they have a funding problem, but they might have a mission problem,” Utah Rep. Celeste Maloy told NOTUS about FEMA. “They’re doing things they shouldn’t be doing. I’d rather say, ‘Use the dollars for what we’ve told you to use them for before asking for more dollars.’”

FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell said Tuesday in a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee hearing that there is less than $5 billion remaining (of the initial $20 billion appropriation) in the agency’s disaster relief fund — an amount she says will not support the “full recovery efforts and overall mission requirements through the end of the fiscal year.”