Dozens of Congress members are urging House Speaker Mike Johnson to call the chamber back into session as Florida is battered by its second major hurricane in less than two weeks.
Hurricane Milton made landfall as a Category 3 storm in Sarasota County around 8:30 p.m. Wednesday night, bringing with it torrential downpours and risks of storm surges up and down Florida’s Gulf Coast. It comes just 13 days after Hurricane Helene barreled into the state’s Big Bend Region on September 26, which caused devastating flooding spanning as far north as the Appalachian Mountains and killed at least 230.
The back-to-back storms have put a strain on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) disaster relief funds. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has said that the agency has enough resources to respond to the immediate needs of both Helene and Milton. However, Mayorkas said that FEMA would not have enough funding to get through the rest of the 2024 hurricane season, which lasts through the end of November.
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In a letter addressed to Johnson on Wednesday, 63 members of the House asked that the speaker call the chamber back to Washington “to approve the necessary funding that will empower FEMA” and other agencies “to fulfill their disaster relief missions.”
“Our communities cannot wait, and we must act swiftly to provide them with the assurance that their government will stand by them,” the letter read.
Congress is headed for a 30-day recess at the start of the month ahead of the November 5 election, and Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, has said that he does not intend to call lawmakers back to session to vote on additional funding. He has vowed, however, that Congress “will provide” once lawmakers return to Capitol Hill.
“You’ll have bipartisan support for that, and it will all happen in due time, and we’ll get that job done,” the speaker said on Fox News Sunday this past weekend.
This is a developing story that will be updated as information becomes available.
