from WND:
Allocations date back to losses that stretch back DECADES
Although the Federal Emergency Management Agency told Congress last month that it had $4 billion in its Disaster Relief Fund, officials also warned that the Fund could have a shortfall of $6 billion by year’s end, a situation FEMA says could deteriorate in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
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While FEMA is expected to ask Congress for new money, budget experts note a surprising fact: FEMA is currently sitting on untapped reserves appropriated for past disasters stretching back decades.
An August report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General noted that in 2022, FEMA “estimated that 847 disaster declarations with approximately $73 billion in unliquidated funds remained open.”
Drilling down on that data, the OIG found that $8.3 billion of that total was for disasters declared in 2012 or earlier.
Such developments are part of a larger pattern in which FEMA failed to close out specific grant programs “within a certain timeframe, known as the period of performance (POP),” according to the IG report. Those projects now represent billions in unliquidated appropriations that could potentially be returned to the DRF (Disaster Relief Fund).”
These “unliquidated obligations” reflect the complex federal budgeting processes. Safeguards are important so that FEMA funding doesn’t become a slush fund that the agency can spend however it chooses, budget experts said, but the inability to tap unspent appropriations from long-ago crises complicates the agency’s ability to respond to immediate disasters.
‘Age Old-Game’
“This is an age-old game that happens and it doesn’t matter what administration is in,” said Brian Cavanaugh, who served as an appropriations manager at FEMA in the Trump administration. “It’s unfortunate how complex disaster relief has become, but it’s skyrocketing costs.”
Cavanaugh said neither action from Congress nor an executive order from the White House would be required to tap those funds because FEMA is operating on the sort of continuing resolutions Congress routinely authorizes. If the money is part of “immediate needs funding,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas could draw from the billions in untapped money to help the victims of Helene and then inform lawmakers he was compelled to do so, leaving elected officials facing charges they sought to pinch pennies when Americans were desperate.
FEMA did not respond to a request for comment about whether it could access the earmarked funds.
Mayorkas, whose Department oversees FEMA, stressed the agency is not broke, and both he and other FEMA officials said this week there was enough money in the Disaster Relief Fund to meet the needs of victims of Hurricane Helene, which with a death count of more than 200 stands as the most lethal storm to hit the U.S. since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Most of Helene’s bills will come due in the future, and Mayorkas said FEMA can meet the day-to-day needs of operations right now in afflicted states but might be hard-pressed if another storm like Helene were to hit this year. Hurricane season officially lasts until the end of November, but historically, September and October have been the months in which the occasional monster smites the U.S.
