Landrieu lobbies for federal disaster relief funding

U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, a New Orleans Democrat, called on President Barack Obama to put at least $1.56 billion of emergency funding into the nation’s disaster relief fund, also known as DRF. Landrieu is chair of the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee. In general, the DRF is used to support disaster response, recovery and mitigation projects. These projects include the reconstruction of schools, hospitals, police stations and fire stations, the elevation of homes, the fortification of levees and improvements to drainage. House Republicans have a plan that would lump the DRF into the Homeland Security Department’s base budget and fund it in part through cuts from other components, such as the Coast Guard, first responders and emergency managers. Landrieu argues this plan is a “radical departure” from standard budgetary practice under previous administrations, both Democratic and Republican. “Catastrophic disasters, such as hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the Midwest floods of 2008, are by definition unpredictable; and we should budget federal disaster response as we always have—above and beyond the base program,” she says. Last year, FEMA was forced to institute a budget freeze because the DRF was underfunded. This freeze caused rebuilding and mitigation projects all over the country to be delayed five months. “FEMA estimates that there are still over $6 billion of outstanding bills from hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Ike, and Gustav and [from] the Midwest and Tennessee floods that will need to paid out in the next few years,” Landrieu says. If the current shortfall is not funded, she says, the DRF may be exhausted by early June, just before the start of hurricane season. —Jeremy Alford