Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas says FEMA no longer has disaster funds

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas faces a new storm of criticism for claiming FEMA no longer has disaster funds, as the DHS inspector general released a report saying the FEMA has at least $8.3 billion in untapped and unspent funds.

On October 2, Mayorkas said, “We’re expecting another hurricane. We don’t have the funds. FEMA doesn’t have the funds to get through the season and what’s imminent.”

This new controversy surfaces as Hurricane Milton has become a Category 5 storm and mass evacuations are now underway in Florida, still battling Hurricane Helene, like much of the Southeast.

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But analysts say FEMA can’t draw on unspent funds from past crises, so the money remains frozen while 600 people are still believed to be missing from Hurricane Helene, at least 220 are dead and entire cities were wiped off the map. Helene is the most catastrophic hurricane to hit the United States since Katrina in 2005.

Budget experts warn that this new storm shows that FEMA has been transformed into a slush fund that the agency and the Biden-Harris White House can spend at will.

An August 2024 report from the Homeland Security Office of Inspector General stated: “As of October 2022, FEMA estimated that 847 disaster declarations with approximately $73 billion in unliquidated funds remained open. » The report also said that “$8.3 billion in unsettled liabilities” was “intended for disasters declared in 2012 or earlier” and that analysts said could be returned to help people struggling to survive during current disasters.

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The IG report agrees: “More than $7 billion in unliquidated funds…could potentially be returned to the Disaster Relief Fund.” »

Jeremy Portnoy of the watchdog group Open the Books notes that the way FEMA has set it up, the agency has blocked grants that it must use during and before a “performance period” deadline. This means that the funds are committed for this period.

However, the Inspector General’s report found that FEMA extended deadlines up to 16 years for grants worth $7 billion, sometimes without explanation. For example, FEMA still has $4.5 billion in frozen and unused funds from superstorm Sandy, which occurred 12 years ago in 2012. FEMA officials must justify and explain in writing why they are extending the deadlines, but we don’t know exactly what they want. » they say to justify freezing funds for so long.

The IG report also notes that FEMA officials expand spending programs based on “subjective” criteria and that “therefore, the potential risk of fraud, waste, and abuse increases as a program stays open for a long time.”

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FEMA responded to a record number of storms. Last year, the United States experienced 28 storms that caused more than $1 billion in damage, and the $1 billion threshold has been hit 19 times so far in 2024. Since 2001, reports show that FEMA nearly ran out of money in its Disaster Relief Fund nine times. times.

Congressional Republicans are already criticizing the Biden-Harris administration’s response to Hurricane Helene. FEMA is under fire for spending $1.1 billion to shelter and assist illegal aliens, according to details in government documents. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., introduced a bill to end FEMA’s shelter program for illegal immigrants.

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This begs the question: With the Biden-Harris White House transforming the FEMA disaster management agency into a complementary agency on the border crisis, is this a tacit admission that its manufactured border crisis really is a disaster?