A federal bill to provide relief to disaster-stricken parts of Virginia and other states as they recover from flood and wind damage brought by Hurricane Helene is expected to be voted on in Congress before the holiday break, Virginia’s members of Congress have said.
The nearly $100 billion in aid, requested by the White House in mid-November, would replenish the coffers of federal agencies that are in charge of providing funding to people affected by Helene, including the Small Business Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund and the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program, among others.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said lawmakers are working to include disaster aid in a continuing resolution that Congress will need to pass by Dec. 20 to avoid a government shutdown. A continuing resolution is a temporary spending bill that allows federal government operations to carry on in lieu of a full funding deal, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The continuing resolution — and the amount of disaster aid that could be included — is still being negotiated.
Kaine and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., had hoped to get a vote on the aid package in the first week of December. Both alluded to partisan politics by far-right members of Congress as the cause of the delay.
Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, said he expects the disaster supplemental bill to be considered on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in the coming week. He has said that he supports disaster aid bills. He declined to comment on the possible appendage of the aid bill to the continuing resolution.
Warner frustrated by partisan gridlock regarding SBA funding
Warner and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., had attempted to fast-track funding to the Small Business Administration in November through a unanimous consent motion. That effort was ultimately tanked by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.
“We, Congress, have still not done our job in terms of refilling the bucket, for example, of the Small Business Administration funding so that people who qualify for loans can get their loans,” Warner said during a press briefing on Thursday. “This isn’t charity, this is why you pay your taxes.”
Much of this disaster relief, Warner said, has been tied up by a small number of far-right lawmakers in Congress.
“Each week that goes on, that business is going to have a harder time rebuilding if they don’t get the loans they’ve got the right to,” Warner said. “It’s so disrespectful that folks who got hit with this hurricane months ago are still waiting for their loans.”
Aid to restore national parks and public lands in question
Kaine and Warner have been pushing to include resources in the disaster aid package to help national parks and public lands, like the Creeper Trail and the Blue Ridge Parkway, to fully recover.
“We have communities like Damascus and others in Georgia and North Carolina, whose economies are really oriented around these public lands,” Kaine said during a press briefing on Thursday. “If you go into a relief package and you provide help for businesses and homeowners, but you’re not doing the repair of the public lands — either the infrastructure, or the roads or trails, or rails to trails — then you’re going to have businesses open but no customers, no tourists, no visitors.”
Warner said that Democrats and Republicans in the Senate agree on the need to include funding to help national parks and public lands recover, but there is some “concern” coming from the House.
“We are fighting tooth and nail to make sure it gets included,” Warner said, before noting that he is willing to compromise “a bit” to get that aid included.
A little help as the wait continues
As residents of Southwest Virginia wait for the slow wheels of government to turn in their favor, Congress has passed a piece of legislation to provide some relief during the upcoming tax season for those hit hard by the storm.
The bill, co-sponsored by Warner, would allow residents to fully deduct qualified disaster casualty losses from their taxes.
The measure seeks to provide assistance to families, particularly those without adequate flood or homeowners insurance, by allowing them to deduct nearly the full cost of those losses from their taxes and receive assistance in the form of larger refunds during tax season, Warner’s office said. Currently, taxpayers can deduct losses only when those combined losses exceed 10% of the taxpayer’s adjusted gross income.
The bill passed the Senate on Wednesday by a voice vote after it passed the House in a 382-7 vote in May. Rep. Bob Good, R-Farmville, voted against the bill. Griffith, along with Reps. Jen Kiggans, R-Virginia Beach, and Rob Wittman, R-Westmoreland County, did not vote on the legislation. The remaining seven members of Virginia’s delegation in the House voted in favor of the bill when it was brought to the chamber floor earlier this year.
