WASHINGTON — A few Republican senators from states that bore the brunt of damages from Hurricane Helene this fall are sounding the alarm about the possibility disaster aid could be stripped from a short-term funding agreement to avoid a government shutdown, as the proposal unveiled this week appears to be unraveling.
In separate posts on X, both of North Carolina’s Republican senators, Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, made clear that additional assistance for hurricane recovery efforts in their hard-hit state is nonnegotiable in any potential new stopgap deal, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, to keep the government funded.
“No CR with disaster relief for Western North Carolina,” Budd wrote in a post Wednesday evening.
Tillis took it a step further in his own tweet, writing that he will “use every tool available to block a CR that fails Western North Carolina communities in need of long-term certainty.”
“If Congressional leaders intend to leave DC before the holidays without passing disaster recovery, they should be prepared to spend Christmas in the Capitol,” the North Carolina senator added.
GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another state hit by Helene, told reporters Wednesday night that “we’ve got to have the disaster relief,” according to The Hill. Graham called it an “absolute moral imperative,” adding that he cannot go back home to South Carolina and “play like it didn’t happen.”
The long-anticipated stopgap funding proposal to keep the government’s lights on past Friday released by congressional leaders on Tuesday evening included an additional $100 billion in disaster relief for communities, a figure in line with President Joe Biden’s request following this fall’s hurricanes.
But the 1,540-page proposal, which would keep the government funded at essentially current levels until mid-March, when new Republican majorities in both the House and Senate and a GOP-led White House will be tasked with working out a full budget for the rest of the fiscal year, includes an array of additions that sent the GOP and eventually President-elect Donald Trump seething Wednesday.
In a joint statement with Vice President-elect JD Vance, Trump said his party “wants to support” the disaster relief included in the legislation but railed against the proposal in its current form, urging Republicans to call Democrats’ bluff on a shutdown.
"Republicans must GET SMART and TOUGH," Trump and Vance wrote in the statement. "If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, then CALL THEIR BLUFF."
States in the Southeast are still recovering from two brutal hurricanes that ravaged that portion of the country this fall. The storms left more than 200 people dead in the region, including more than 100 people in North Carolina alone, and caused billions of dollars in damages.
In the immediate aftermath of the storms, Biden warned lawmakers about the need to allocate more funds to help communities recover, especially given that one disaster loan program already ran dry. Since the hurricanes, Congress has yet to designate new funds to recovery efforts.
Some Republican senators from states hit by the storms who were outspoken in their wake about the need for more funds have not commented on the possibility aid could be stripped. Florida’s Rick Scott, for instance, who proposed a bill in October to add an additional $20 billion to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster fund, criticized the CR on X but did not comment on the disaster portion.
Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna who called for more assistance to those impacted by the hurricanes in her district following the storms, argued the disaster aid should be passed as its own bill, separate from general government funding.