US disaster programs are teetering. Milton could topple them.

[useapen]

Federal relief, loan and flood insurance programs face mounting costs
and questions about their ability to pay as Hurricane Milton spirals
toward Florida’s Gulf Coast.

The federal government could be nearing a collapse of its ability to
help with major disasters as the second catastrophic hurricane in less
than two weeks bears down on Florida.

Hurricane Milton, a Category 5 storm whose winds reached 180 mph late
Monday, is whirling toward a possible landfall in Tampa Bay just as the
main federal disaster programs are facing financial instability amid a
series of recent calamities, including Hurricane Helene’s flooding of
communities throughout the Southeast.

Those include the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster fund,
which pays for repair and rebuilding efforts; the Small Business
Administration’s loans to stricken businesses and homeowners; and
FEMA’s flood insurance program. All could be within weeks of running
dry of cash, based on recent remarks by President Joe Biden, Homeland
Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and insurance analysts — even as
FEMA sought to assure the public Monday that it has enough money to
meet its “life-saving” responsibilities for Helene and Milton.

The concerns about federal resources are growing as lawmakers of both
parties clamor for Congress to return to Washington before the November
election to approve additional disaster funding. Fiscal conservatives
in the House have balked at that, and Speaker Mike Johnson said this
weekend that he had no plans to bring his members back.

Washington’s ability to pay for recovering from the back-to-back
disasters is “a big concern,” said Elizabeth Zimmerman, who ran FEMA’s
disaster response office in the Obama administration. She added, “It
could be very devastating to the financial aspects of what the federal
government has.”

The two hurricanes raise concerns about whether “FEMA and the federal
government has money to respond to any disaster that comes up that they
need to provide life-sustaining support in,” added Zimmerman, a senior
executive adviser at IEM disaster consultants.

Mayorkas has said FEMA’s disaster fund could run out of money next
month, leaving it unable to pay for rebuilding public buildings, roads
and facilities such as water-treatment plants, all of which are
essential to restoring normalcy. The agency’s flood insurance program,
which has nearly 2 million policies in the areas hit by Helene or
threatened by Milton, may also run out of money to pay claims and be
forced to borrow from federal taxpayers, according to credit-ratings
agency AM Best.

And the Small Business Administration “will run out of funding in a few
weeks” to provide homeowners and businesses low-interest disaster loans
for repair and rebuilding, Biden warned Friday in a letter to Congress.

Even a small disaster program run by the Federal Highway Administration
is facing a budget shortfall that could limit its ability to rebuild
federal roads damaged by Helene or Milton.

The SBA’s disaster-loan program provided $45 billion in disaster loans
— mostly to homeowners — from 2001 through 2022. If the SBA were unable
to provide the loans after Helene and Milton, that would be a huge
setback on recovery and would further drain the FEMA disaster fund by
prompting households to collect from FEMA’s emergency aid.

Biden compounded the strain on FEMA when he agreed in recent days to
pay the entire cost of debris removal and emergency measures after
Helene instead of the customary 75 percent of costs. Normally, states
would have paid the other 25 percent.

FEMA also faces immediate concerns about saving lives in hurricane-hit
areas. The agency’s Daily Operations Briefing published Monday morning
shows that its Urban Search and Rescue operations are “not mission
capable” and have only four teams available.

More than 200 counties encompassing 31 million people in six states
have been declared federal disasters or emergencies due to Helene or
Milton. Helene has killed at least 230 people after it deluged much of
Florida’s Gulf Coast, crashed ashore in the state’s Big Bend area and
left a trail of flooding and wreckage across states including Georgia,
North Carolina and Tennessee.

Milton poses an even more potentially dire scenario, as its path
threatens to make a direct strike on Tampa Bay, one of the nation’s
most vulnerable communities for storm surge. The region of more than 3
million people hasn’t suffered a major hurricane strike since 1921, and
regional planners have warned that such a disaster could inflict
hundreds of billions of dollars in losses.

“This is not a good situation,” National Weather Service Director Ken
Graham said of Hurricane Milton’s potential devastation when it makes
landfall Wednesday.

The recent warnings by Biden, Mayorkas and experts about disaster
funding contrast with the optimism of financial projections made before
Milton took aim at Florida’s Gulf Coast.

At a press briefing Monday, a senior FEMA official sought to assure the
public about the agency’s immediate capabilities without directly
answering questions about the agency’s ability to pay for long-term
recovery.

“We are supporting the life-saving requirements that we have,” FEMA
acting Associate Administrator for Response and Recovery Keith Turi
said, referring to Helene and Milton. “If there’s a point in which we
need to take additional measures, … then we’ll take those measures when
the time is appropriate.”

Turi added that FEMA was moving three search-and-rescue teams from
California to the Southeast and is getting help from the Coast Guard.

The condition of the federal disaster programs is putting pressure on
Congress to end its election-season recess early and approve additional
disaster aid.

On Sunday, Johnson reiterated his refusal to convene the House ahead of
its Nov. 12 scheduled return. “We will help people in these disaster-
prone areas,” Johnson told Fox News. “It’ll all happen in due time.”

A triple fiscal crunch
The three main federal disaster programs have faced budgetary problems
previously. But it’s never happened all at once.

The current strains are the result of long-standing weaknesses in the
programs colliding with the increasing damage from disasters due to
climate change and development.

“The frequency and intensity of disasters continue to increase every
year, and the number of federal disaster declarations continues to rise
in parallel,” said Carrie Speranza, president of the International
Association of Emergency Managers.

Carlos Martín, director of the Remodeling Futures program at the
Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, said the FEMA is now facing
problems paying not just long-term disaster rebuilding expenses but
also short-term emergency costs.

“When you’re questioning that, and that becomes a question of whether
the federal government will play the role that it has over the last 50
years, that’s a huge concern,” Martín said.

FEMA’s multibillion-dollar Disaster Relief Fund faced problems in early
August when it ran low, and the agency imposed restrictions that led it
to temporarily cut off $9 billion for rebuilding projects.

Although FEMA lifted the restrictions Oct. 1 when Congress allocated
$20 billion for the current fiscal year, the agency could burn through
that money quickly and be forced to reimpose the restrictions if
lawmakers do not provide extra money in the coming months.

Mayorkas warned last week that FEMA “does not have the funds to make it
through the [hurricane] season,” which ends Nov. 30.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre echoed a similar theme
Monday, saying: “The FEMA disaster relief fund faces a shortfall at the
end of the year.”

“The recovery from this is going to be very costly,” said Zimmerman,
the former FEMA official. “These response efforts are very costly with
all this search-and-rescue.”

FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program, or NFIP, could run out of
money because of weaknesses when Congress created the program in 1968
and did not require insurance premiums to reflect a property’s
potential for flood damage. The inadequate premiums forced FEMA to
borrow $20.5 billion from the U.S. Treasury after Hurricanes Harvey,
Irma and Maria in 2017.

FEMA has paid billions of dollars in interest on the debt, which it
says it cannot repay. That has left FEMA able to borrow only an
additional $10 billion to pay insurance claims.

“I don’t think the NFIP needs to dig into its borrowing authority for
Helene,” said Sridhar Manyem, senior director of industry research at
AM Best credit ratings agency. “But Milton is another story. That could
be a game-changer.”

Hurricane Milton “could exhaust the NFIP and require the government to
have to provide more funding for payments to be made to NFIP
policyholders,” AM Best Associate Director David Blades said.

FEMA said it has the ability to pay $14.8 billion in NFIP claims
“without seeking additional assistance from Congress.”

The only disaster to exceed that level is Hurricane Katrina, which
resulted in claims payments exceeding $16 billion while killing more
than 1,300 people in New Orleans and elsewhere. Like Katrina, Milton
has surged to Category 5 fury over the warm waters of the Gulf of
Mexico, and it is expected to remain dangerous even if its winds
slacken somewhat before striking land.

Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications research at the climate
risk modeling firm First Street, offered a more optimistic take: Helene
and Milton “are not likely to exhaust NFIP’s borrowing authority,” he
said, in part because few residents have national flood insurance
policies in the hard-hit areas of Georgia and North Carolina.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/07/hurricanes-eroding-
washingtons-disaster-programs-00182784

[NoBody]

On Tue, 8 Oct 2024 07:04:55 -0000 (UTC), useapen

Post by useapen
Federal relief, loan and flood insurance programs face mounting costs
and questions about their ability to pay as Hurricane Milton spirals
toward Florida’s Gulf Coast.
The federal government could be nearing a collapse of its ability to
help with major disasters as the second catastrophic hurricane in less
than two weeks bears down on Florida.
Hurricane Milton, a Category 5 storm whose winds reached 180 mph late
Monday, is whirling toward a possible landfall in Tampa Bay just as the
main federal disaster programs are facing financial instability amid a
series of recent calamities, including Hurricane Helene’s flooding of
communities throughout the Southeast.

Biden and Harris are the equivalent of Nero fiddling while Rome
burned.

[Scout]

Post by NoBody
On Tue, 8 Oct 2024 07:04:55 -0000 (UTC), useapen

Post by useapen
Federal relief, loan and flood insurance programs face mounting costs
and questions about their ability to pay as Hurricane Milton spirals
toward Florida's Gulf Coast.
The federal government could be nearing a collapse of its ability to
help with major disasters as the second catastrophic hurricane in less
than two weeks bears down on Florida.
Hurricane Milton, a Category 5 storm whose winds reached 180 mph late
Monday, is whirling toward a possible landfall in Tampa Bay just as the
main federal disaster programs are facing financial instability amid a
series of recent calamities, including Hurricane Helene's flooding of
communities throughout the Southeast.

Biden and Harris are the equivalent of Nero fiddling while Rome
burned.

What else can they do.. most of FEMA's resources have been used up or are
being used to provided housing, food and supplied to the hoards of illegal
aliens that Biden & Kamala have allowed free access to the US. Competing
with citizens for jobs and driving up crime rates by those who feel it's
easier to steal than to work

[Retirednoguilt]

Post by useapen
Federal relief, loan and flood insurance programs face mounting costs
and questions about their ability to pay as Hurricane Milton spirals
toward Florida’s Gulf Coast.
The federal government could be nearing a collapse of its ability to
help with major disasters as the second catastrophic hurricane in less
than two weeks bears down on Florida.
Hurricane Milton, a Category 5 storm whose winds reached 180 mph late
Monday, is whirling toward a possible landfall in Tampa Bay just as the
main federal disaster programs are facing financial instability amid a
series of recent calamities, including Hurricane Helene’s flooding of
communities throughout the Southeast.
Those include the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster fund,
which pays for repair and rebuilding efforts; the Small Business
Administration’s loans to stricken businesses and homeowners; and
FEMA’s flood insurance program. All could be within weeks of running
dry of cash, based on recent remarks by President Joe Biden, Homeland
Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and insurance analysts — even as
FEMA sought to assure the public Monday that it has enough money to
meet its “life-saving” responsibilities for Helene and Milton.
The concerns about federal resources are growing as lawmakers of both
parties clamor for Congress to return to Washington before the November
election to approve additional disaster funding. Fiscal conservatives
in the House have balked at that, and Speaker Mike Johnson said this
weekend that he had no plans to bring his members back.
Washington’s ability to pay for recovering from the back-to-back
disasters is “a big concern,” said Elizabeth Zimmerman, who ran FEMA’s
disaster response office in the Obama administration. She added, “It
could be very devastating to the financial aspects of what the federal
government has.”
The two hurricanes raise concerns about whether “FEMA and the federal
government has money to respond to any disaster that comes up that they
need to provide life-sustaining support in,” added Zimmerman, a senior
executive adviser at IEM disaster consultants.
Mayorkas has said FEMA’s disaster fund could run out of money next
month, leaving it unable to pay for rebuilding public buildings, roads
and facilities such as water-treatment plants, all of which are
essential to restoring normalcy. The agency’s flood insurance program,
which has nearly 2 million policies in the areas hit by Helene or
threatened by Milton, may also run out of money to pay claims and be
forced to borrow from federal taxpayers, according to credit-ratings
agency AM Best.
And the Small Business Administration “will run out of funding in a few
weeks” to provide homeowners and businesses low-interest disaster loans
for repair and rebuilding, Biden warned Friday in a letter to Congress.
Even a small disaster program run by the Federal Highway Administration
is facing a budget shortfall that could limit its ability to rebuild
federal roads damaged by Helene or Milton.
The SBA’s disaster-loan program provided $45 billion in disaster loans
— mostly to homeowners — from 2001 through 2022. If the SBA were unable
to provide the loans after Helene and Milton, that would be a huge
setback on recovery and would further drain the FEMA disaster fund by
prompting households to collect from FEMA’s emergency aid.
Biden compounded the strain on FEMA when he agreed in recent days to
pay the entire cost of debris removal and emergency measures after
Helene instead of the customary 75 percent of costs. Normally, states
would have paid the other 25 percent.
FEMA also faces immediate concerns about saving lives in hurricane-hit
areas. The agency’s Daily Operations Briefing published Monday morning
shows that its Urban Search and Rescue operations are “not mission
capable” and have only four teams available.
More than 200 counties encompassing 31 million people in six states
have been declared federal disasters or emergencies due to Helene or
Milton. Helene has killed at least 230 people after it deluged much of
Florida’s Gulf Coast, crashed ashore in the state’s Big Bend area and
left a trail of flooding and wreckage across states including Georgia,
North Carolina and Tennessee.
Milton poses an even more potentially dire scenario, as its path
threatens to make a direct strike on Tampa Bay, one of the nation’s
most vulnerable communities for storm surge. The region of more than 3
million people hasn’t suffered a major hurricane strike since 1921, and
regional planners have warned that such a disaster could inflict
hundreds of billions of dollars in losses.
“This is not a good situation,” National Weather Service Director Ken
Graham said of Hurricane Milton’s potential devastation when it makes
landfall Wednesday.
The recent warnings by Biden, Mayorkas and experts about disaster
funding contrast with the optimism of financial projections made before
Milton took aim at Florida’s Gulf Coast.
At a press briefing Monday, a senior FEMA official sought to assure the
public about the agency’s immediate capabilities without directly
answering questions about the agency’s ability to pay for long-term
recovery.
“We are supporting the life-saving requirements that we have,” FEMA
acting Associate Administrator for Response and Recovery Keith Turi
said, referring to Helene and Milton. “If there’s a point in which we
need to take additional measures, … then we’ll take those measures when
the time is appropriate.”
Turi added that FEMA was moving three search-and-rescue teams from
California to the Southeast and is getting help from the Coast Guard.
The condition of the federal disaster programs is putting pressure on
Congress to end its election-season recess early and approve additional
disaster aid.
On Sunday, Johnson reiterated his refusal to convene the House ahead of
its Nov. 12 scheduled return. “We will help people in these disaster-
prone areas,” Johnson told Fox News. “It’ll all happen in due time.”
A triple fiscal crunch
The three main federal disaster programs have faced budgetary problems
previously. But it’s never happened all at once.
The current strains are the result of long-standing weaknesses in the
programs colliding with the increasing damage from disasters due to
climate change and development.
“The frequency and intensity of disasters continue to increase every
year, and the number of federal disaster declarations continues to rise
in parallel,” said Carrie Speranza, president of the International
Association of Emergency Managers.
Carlos Martín, director of the Remodeling Futures program at the
Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, said the FEMA is now facing
problems paying not just long-term disaster rebuilding expenses but
also short-term emergency costs.
“When you’re questioning that, and that becomes a question of whether
the federal government will play the role that it has over the last 50
years, that’s a huge concern,” Martín said.
FEMA’s multibillion-dollar Disaster Relief Fund faced problems in early
August when it ran low, and the agency imposed restrictions that led it
to temporarily cut off $9 billion for rebuilding projects.
Although FEMA lifted the restrictions Oct. 1 when Congress allocated
$20 billion for the current fiscal year, the agency could burn through
that money quickly and be forced to reimpose the restrictions if
lawmakers do not provide extra money in the coming months.
Mayorkas warned last week that FEMA “does not have the funds to make it
through the [hurricane] season,” which ends Nov. 30.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre echoed a similar theme
Monday, saying: “The FEMA disaster relief fund faces a shortfall at the
end of the year.”
“The recovery from this is going to be very costly,” said Zimmerman,
the former FEMA official. “These response efforts are very costly with
all this search-and-rescue.”
FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program, or NFIP, could run out of
money because of weaknesses when Congress created the program in 1968
and did not require insurance premiums to reflect a property’s
potential for flood damage. The inadequate premiums forced FEMA to
borrow $20.5 billion from the U.S. Treasury after Hurricanes Harvey,
Irma and Maria in 2017.
FEMA has paid billions of dollars in interest on the debt, which it
says it cannot repay. That has left FEMA able to borrow only an
additional $10 billion to pay insurance claims.
“I don’t think the NFIP needs to dig into its borrowing authority for
Helene,” said Sridhar Manyem, senior director of industry research at
AM Best credit ratings agency. “But Milton is another story. That could
be a game-changer.”
Hurricane Milton “could exhaust the NFIP and require the government to
have to provide more funding for payments to be made to NFIP
policyholders,” AM Best Associate Director David Blades said.
FEMA said it has the ability to pay $14.8 billion in NFIP claims
“without seeking additional assistance from Congress.”
The only disaster to exceed that level is Hurricane Katrina, which
resulted in claims payments exceeding $16 billion while killing more
than 1,300 people in New Orleans and elsewhere. Like Katrina, Milton
has surged to Category 5 fury over the warm waters of the Gulf of
Mexico, and it is expected to remain dangerous even if its winds
slacken somewhat before striking land.
Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications research at the climate
risk modeling firm First Street, offered a more optimistic take: Helene
and Milton “are not likely to exhaust NFIP’s borrowing authority,” he
said, in part because few residents have national flood insurance
policies in the hard-hit areas of Georgia and North Carolina.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/07/hurricanes-eroding-
washingtons-disaster-programs-00182784

Totally solvable problem if the majority of members of both houses of
Congress were compassionate. It's called a supplemental appropriation.
Unfortunately, in this highly politicized environment, a significant
number of Representatives and Senators would prefer not to do so in
order to blame the opposition party.

[michael horton]

Post by Retirednoguilt

Post by useapen
Federal relief, loan and flood insurance programs face mounting costs
and questions about their ability to pay as Hurricane Milton spirals
toward Florida’s Gulf Coast.
The federal government could be nearing a collapse of its ability to
help with major disasters as the second catastrophic hurricane in less
than two weeks bears down on Florida.
Hurricane Milton, a Category 5 storm whose winds reached 180 mph late
Monday, is whirling toward a possible landfall in Tampa Bay just as the
main federal disaster programs are facing financial instability amid a
series of recent calamities, including Hurricane Helene’s flooding of
communities throughout the Southeast.
Those include the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster fund,
which pays for repair and rebuilding efforts; the Small Business
Administration’s loans to stricken businesses and homeowners; and
FEMA’s flood insurance program. All could be within weeks of running
dry of cash, based on recent remarks by President Joe Biden, Homeland
Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and insurance analysts — even as
FEMA sought to assure the public Monday that it has enough money to
meet its “life-saving” responsibilities for Helene and Milton.
The concerns about federal resources are growing as lawmakers of both
parties clamor for Congress to return to Washington before the November
election to approve additional disaster funding. Fiscal conservatives
in the House have balked at that, and Speaker Mike Johnson said this
weekend that he had no plans to bring his members back.
Washington’s ability to pay for recovering from the back-to-back
disasters is “a big concern,” said Elizabeth Zimmerman, who ran FEMA’s
disaster response office in the Obama administration. She added, “It
could be very devastating to the financial aspects of what the federal
government has.”
The two hurricanes raise concerns about whether “FEMA and the federal
government has money to respond to any disaster that comes up that they
need to provide life-sustaining support in,” added Zimmerman, a senior
executive adviser at IEM disaster consultants.
Mayorkas has said FEMA’s disaster fund could run out of money next
month, leaving it unable to pay for rebuilding public buildings, roads
and facilities such as water-treatment plants, all of which are
essential to restoring normalcy. The agency’s flood insurance program,
which has nearly 2 million policies in the areas hit by Helene or
threatened by Milton, may also run out of money to pay claims and be
forced to borrow from federal taxpayers, according to credit-ratings
agency AM Best.
And the Small Business Administration “will run out of funding in a few
weeks” to provide homeowners and businesses low-interest disaster loans
for repair and rebuilding, Biden warned Friday in a letter to Congress.
Even a small disaster program run by the Federal Highway Administration
is facing a budget shortfall that could limit its ability to rebuild
federal roads damaged by Helene or Milton.
The SBA’s disaster-loan program provided $45 billion in disaster loans
— mostly to homeowners — from 2001 through 2022. If the SBA were unable
to provide the loans after Helene and Milton, that would be a huge
setback on recovery and would further drain the FEMA disaster fund by
prompting households to collect from FEMA’s emergency aid.
Biden compounded the strain on FEMA when he agreed in recent days to
pay the entire cost of debris removal and emergency measures after
Helene instead of the customary 75 percent of costs. Normally, states
would have paid the other 25 percent.
FEMA also faces immediate concerns about saving lives in hurricane-hit
areas. The agency’s Daily Operations Briefing published Monday morning
shows that its Urban Search and Rescue operations are “not mission
capable” and have only four teams available.
More than 200 counties encompassing 31 million people in six states
have been declared federal disasters or emergencies due to Helene or
Milton. Helene has killed at least 230 people after it deluged much of
Florida’s Gulf Coast, crashed ashore in the state’s Big Bend area and
left a trail of flooding and wreckage across states including Georgia,
North Carolina and Tennessee.
Milton poses an even more potentially dire scenario, as its path
threatens to make a direct strike on Tampa Bay, one of the nation’s
most vulnerable communities for storm surge. The region of more than 3
million people hasn’t suffered a major hurricane strike since 1921, and
regional planners have warned that such a disaster could inflict
hundreds of billions of dollars in losses.
“This is not a good situation,” National Weather Service Director Ken
Graham said of Hurricane Milton’s potential devastation when it makes
landfall Wednesday.
The recent warnings by Biden, Mayorkas and experts about disaster
funding contrast with the optimism of financial projections made before
Milton took aim at Florida’s Gulf Coast.
At a press briefing Monday, a senior FEMA official sought to assure the
public about the agency’s immediate capabilities without directly
answering questions about the agency’s ability to pay for long-term
recovery.
“We are supporting the life-saving requirements that we have,” FEMA
acting Associate Administrator for Response and Recovery Keith Turi
said, referring to Helene and Milton. “If there’s a point in which we
need to take additional measures, … then we’ll take those measures when
the time is appropriate.”
Turi added that FEMA was moving three search-and-rescue teams from
California to the Southeast and is getting help from the Coast Guard.
The condition of the federal disaster programs is putting pressure on
Congress to end its election-season recess early and approve additional
disaster aid.
On Sunday, Johnson reiterated his refusal to convene the House ahead of
its Nov. 12 scheduled return. “We will help people in these disaster-
prone areas,” Johnson told Fox News. “It’ll all happen in due time.”
A triple fiscal crunch
The three main federal disaster programs have faced budgetary problems
previously. But it’s never happened all at once.
The current strains are the result of long-standing weaknesses in the
programs colliding with the increasing damage from disasters due to
climate change and development.
“The frequency and intensity of disasters continue to increase every
year, and the number of federal disaster declarations continues to rise
in parallel,” said Carrie Speranza, president of the International
Association of Emergency Managers.
Carlos Martín, director of the Remodeling Futures program at the
Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, said the FEMA is now facing
problems paying not just long-term disaster rebuilding expenses but
also short-term emergency costs.
“When you’re questioning that, and that becomes a question of whether
the federal government will play the role that it has over the last 50
years, that’s a huge concern,” Martín said.
FEMA’s multibillion-dollar Disaster Relief Fund faced problems in early
August when it ran low, and the agency imposed restrictions that led it
to temporarily cut off $9 billion for rebuilding projects.
Although FEMA lifted the restrictions Oct. 1 when Congress allocated
$20 billion for the current fiscal year, the agency could burn through
that money quickly and be forced to reimpose the restrictions if
lawmakers do not provide extra money in the coming months.
Mayorkas warned last week that FEMA “does not have the funds to make it
through the [hurricane] season,” which ends Nov. 30.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre echoed a similar theme
Monday, saying: “The FEMA disaster relief fund faces a shortfall at the
end of the year.”
“The recovery from this is going to be very costly,” said Zimmerman,
the former FEMA official. “These response efforts are very costly with
all this search-and-rescue.”
FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program, or NFIP, could run out of
money because of weaknesses when Congress created the program in 1968
and did not require insurance premiums to reflect a property’s
potential for flood damage. The inadequate premiums forced FEMA to
borrow $20.5 billion from the U.S. Treasury after Hurricanes Harvey,
Irma and Maria in 2017.
FEMA has paid billions of dollars in interest on the debt, which it
says it cannot repay. That has left FEMA able to borrow only an
additional $10 billion to pay insurance claims.
“I don’t think the NFIP needs to dig into its borrowing authority for
Helene,” said Sridhar Manyem, senior director of industry research at
AM Best credit ratings agency. “But Milton is another story. That could
be a game-changer.”
Hurricane Milton “could exhaust the NFIP and require the government to
have to provide more funding for payments to be made to NFIP
policyholders,” AM Best Associate Director David Blades said.
FEMA said it has the ability to pay $14.8 billion in NFIP claims
“without seeking additional assistance from Congress.”
The only disaster to exceed that level is Hurricane Katrina, which
resulted in claims payments exceeding $16 billion while killing more
than 1,300 people in New Orleans and elsewhere. Like Katrina, Milton
has surged to Category 5 fury over the warm waters of the Gulf of
Mexico, and it is expected to remain dangerous even if its winds
slacken somewhat before striking land.
Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications research at the climate
risk modeling firm First Street, offered a more optimistic take: Helene
and Milton “are not likely to exhaust NFIP’s borrowing authority,” he
said, in part because few residents have national flood insurance
policies in the hard-hit areas of Georgia and North Carolina.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/07/hurricanes-eroding-
washingtons-disaster-programs-00182784

Totally solvable problem if the majority of members of both houses of
Congress were compassionate. It's called a supplemental appropriation.
Unfortunately, in this highly politicized environment, a significant
number of Representatives and Senators would prefer not to do so in
order to blame the opposition party.

That seems to be the crux of the problem. The electoral penalties of
the past are forgotten lessons to the bunch on both sides. Hopefully
this election gives them all a jolt.