President Biden sent a formal letter to Congress late Friday night saying that a key loans program for helping disaster victims will run out of money within weeks at a time when Americans hit by Hurricane Helene need the relief.
The Small Business Administration disaster loans program helps renters and homeowners repair properties and helps businesses cover basic operation expenses. But the agency needs about $1.6 billion to keep running for the year, an administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic information.
Congress is on recess until Nov. 12. But Biden said the program would run out of funds before then.
“I warned the Congress of this potential shortfall even before Hurricane Helene landed on America’s shores,” Biden said in his letter, saying the White House had asked for more funding for the SBA “multiple times over the past several months” including during the recent negotiations over a stop-gap funding bill.
“The Congress must act to restore this funding,” said Biden, who traveled to four states this week to survey damage.
Biden told Congress that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has enough resources for the immediate emergency response to Hurricane Helene, but said it will need more money to help with longer-term recovery. How much more money is needed is still to be determined, he said.
The hurricane response has become an election issue
Hurricane Helene ravaged a huge swath of North Carolina and big parts of Georgia, two critical states for the upcoming federal election.
The federal response to the disaster has become an issue in the campaign. The administration is going to great lengths to demonstrate it was both prepared for the storm and has pulled out the stops to help people hurt by it.
Biden said the response has been “robust and well-coordinated.” FEMA has so far provided more than $110 million in aid to people affected by the storm, including more than $26 million to 25,000 households in North Carolina, where Vice President Harris is traveling on Saturday. She went to Georgia earlier this week to reassure victims and talk to community leaders there.
Former President Donald Trump has also been to Georgia and North Carolina this week. On Friday night in Fayetteville, N.C., he said: “This is Katrina,” alluding to the deadly 2005 hurricane response botched by the government. “They are doing the worst job on a hurricane that any administration has ever done.”
Trump has repeatedly made false claims about the disaster response, including that FEMA is running out of money because it has spent it on migrants, and that Biden had not been in touch with the Republican governor of Georgia.
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