WASHINGTON — The House voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to approve a $7.85 billion Hurricane Harvey aid bill, a down payment on what is expected to be a m
WASHINGTON — The House voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to approve a $7.85 billion Hurricane Harvey aid bill, a down payment on what is expected to be a much larger federal sum to address catastrophic flooding in Texas and Louisiana.
The 419-3 vote came as another monster storm, Hurricane Irma, was barreling toward Puerto Rico and Florida. Together, the two storms could make this the most expensive hurricane season in history.
The final Harvey tally for federal aid could reach as much as $150 billion, officials estimate.
But the initial payment approved Wednesday is not a done deal. The Senate is expected to add an unrelated provision to raise the federal debt ceiling to allow the government to continue borrowing money to cover existing spending commitments and avoid an economy-shaking default. Such votes are typically contentious, splitting the Republican Party between its mainstream faction and hard-line conservatives who oppose increases in the borrowing limit to send a message against spending.
Still, Wednesday’s relatively swift House vote was seen as a good sign for those Americans in need of immediate help from federal emergency programs, and the agencies that serve them.
“Help is on the way, ” said Rep. John Culberson, a Republican who represents part of Houston. Culberson lauded the rare bipartisan achievement in remarks on the House floor.
Democrats noted that many Republicans, including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, voted against a $50.5 billion relief package in 2013 following Superstorm Sandy, which devastated the Northeast, and demanded offsetting budget savings. That region is predominately Democratic-leaning, while the states devastated by Harvey, and now threatened by Irma, a Category 5 hurricane, lean heavily Republican _ leaving some Democrats seething that Republicans now are rushing to provide unconditional aid.
Rep. Nita Lowey, a New York Democrat, thanked Culberson after his floor remarks for his support of the Sandy relief package, and she recalled that he was the only Texas Republican to support it.
Another Texan, Rep. Blake Farenthold, who was among the Republican lawmakers who had vocally opposed Sandy aid in the name of fiscal restraint, said of the Harvey relief: “I urge Americans to open their hearts.”
Just before the vote, President Donald Trump met at the White House with congressional leaders from both parties to negotiate a solution to the prospective legislative fight surrounding the debt limit.
Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin, who for weeks said Congress must pass a debt limit increase unencumbered with unrelated provisions, said earlier this week that the White House wants to add the debt limit extension to Harvey relief money.
Mnuchin has said lawmakers need to act before the end of the month to avoid the risk of a default. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the Treasury will run out of cash to pay the nation’s bills by early- to mid-October.
Democratic leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California said they would support raising the debt ceiling as part of the Harvey package, but only through mid-December.
Ryan called that a “ridiculous idea” and said Democrats were playing politics with the issue. Republican leaders want to authorize enough borrowing to extend the debt limit through the 2018 midterm elections, given the difficult internal politics of their party.
Trump, during the meeting with leaders on Wednesday, acknowledged there are “many, many things that are on the plate.”
“Hopefully we can solve them in a rational way, and maybe we won’ t be able to, ” he continued. “We’ ll probably know pretty much at the end of this meeting, or the meetings that we’ ll be having over a short period of time. But our country has a lot of great assets and we have some liabilities that we have to work out, so we’ ll see if we can do that.”
In addition to the debt ceiling and the pair of violent storms, Trump and party leaders need to agree on another contentious bill to finance government operations in the new fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, or face a government shutdown.
Given Trump’s action on Tuesday rescinding the 5-year-old Obama-era program protecting from deportation immigrants who came to the country illegally as children, Congress now has a six-month deadline for coming up with a replacement to become law.
In addition, Trump is trying to sell a still-unwritten tax overhaul, pitch an infrastructure plan and pass a new health care measure.
