Homeland Safety Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas appeared through satellite tv for pc for the each day White Home press briefing on Thursday. He was there to reply questions relating to the federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Mayorkas was requested whether or not or not he felt FEMA is perpetually “underfunded” as an company. Mayorkas gave a diplomatic however laser sharp reply directed on the do-nothing Republicans in Congress.
“Let me take a step again and widen the aperture of that query, if I could,” Mayorkas started. “A unbroken decision just isn’t a steady strategy to fund the federal authorities.”
He was clearly referring to Republican dysfunction in Congress which has led to a collection of continuous resolutions to maintain our authorities funded.
“The catastrophe reduction fund, and the funding of it, ought to be utterly nonpartisan and apolitical. It is a fund that gives much-needed reduction to people no matter get together,” Mayorkas went on. “And I’ve mentioned publicly, many a time since Hurricane Helene first hit in late September, that when our courageous people—and I say ‘our’ which means not simply federal, however federal, state, and native—attain into flooded waters to avoid wasting a person, they don’t seem to be asking about that particular person’s get together affiliation. They’re rescuing a fellow human being, and we must be funded accordingly.”
Republican Speaker Mike Johnson has already refused to commit extra disaster-relief funding in the wake of Hurricane Helene, not to mention name the Home again into session. In the meantime, GOP luminaries like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is claiming somebody controls the climate (she was not clear whether or not she meant Democrats or “elites,” however it’s actually not Mom Nature) whereas voting towards fundamental funding for FEMA, simply earlier than Helene hit.
Like many present authorities officers, Mayorkas has needed to spend an inordinate period of time debunking harmful misinformation pushed by Donald Trump and different GOP officers regarding FEMA’s response to Hurricane Helene and now Milton in Florida.
Mayorkas has lengthy been a goal of GOP ire, and he has accorded himself effectively by dropping fact-bombs at Republicans’ expense any likelihood he will get.