White House seeks $29 billion disaster aid package

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Wednesday asked Congress for $29 billion in disaster aid to cover ongoing hurricane relief and recovery efforts and to pay federal flood insurance claims.

The request comes as the government is spending almost $200 million a day for emergency hurricane response and faces a surge in flood claims for federally insured homes and businesses slammed by hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told lawmakers in officially submitting the request that the federal flood insurance program “is not designed to handle catastrophic losses like those caused by Harvey, Irma and Maria. The NFIP is simply not fiscally sustainable in its current form.”

Mulvaney proposed a package of changes to the flood insurance program that would protect low-income policyholders from big rate hikes and allow the government to drop from the program properties that have been repeatedly flooded.

In the meantime, Wednesday’s request proposal would provide $16 billion to pay those flood claims, along with $13 billion for Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster relief efforts. Federal firefighting accounts would receive $577 million as well to replenish them after a disastrous season of Western wildfires.

Congress last month approved a $15.3 billion aid package that combined community development block grant rebuilding funds with emergency money for cleanup, repair and housing.

The federal flood insurance program is on track to run out of money to pay claims during the week of Oct. 23. Mulvaney said more than 20,000 federal workers have been deployed by various agencies to help in the hurricane recovery effort. The “burn rate” of almost $200 million a day is requiring an infusion of cash into FEMA coffers.

The year-end package would rebuild infrastructure, help people without insurance restore their homes and, perhaps, help Puerto Rico reconstitute its shattered electrical grid.

President Trump raised eyebrows in a Tuesday interview when he said the Puerto Rican government’s debt would have to be “wiped out.”

But Mulvaney told reporters that “we are not going to be offering a bailout for Puerto Rico.”