EXCLUSIVE — Republican Sen. Rick Scott (FL) introduced legislation with his Florida colleague Marco Rubio on Wednesday that would provide emergency relief funding for natural disasters, including Hurricane Idalia in Florida and the Hawaii wildfires, separate from increasingly controversial Ukraine aid.
The legislation, titled the Federal Disaster Responsibility Act, would replenish FEMA’s disaster relief fund with $16.5 billion. It would also ensure final passage of the Block Grant Assistance Act, which provides authority to the Department of Agriculture to issue grants to all U.S. agriculture producers affected by natural disasters in 2022, as well as the Hurricane Tax Relief Act, which provides disaster-loss tax relief to families affected by hurricanes.
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This bill comes in response to a White House request for $44 billion in emergency spending that would tie the $16 billion in disaster relief to $24 billion in Ukraine aid as the war-torn country defends itself against Russia’s invasion.
This has received major pushback from the Republican senators, who say President Joe Biden is holding the disaster aid “hostage” to get the Ukraine aid through Congress more easily. The legislation by Scott and Rubio has bicameral support, with Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) leading a companion bill in the House.
“When disaster strikes, families can’t be left wondering whether the federal government is going to show up or if they’ll be strung along while Washington uses them as a bargaining chip in a massive spending bill,” Scott said in a statement. “Funding for Ukraine should NEVER be paired with disaster relief for American families. Congress has passed all of the provisions in this bill before, and it needs to do its job and get that done again.”
Scott has not yet said whether he will attempt to force a vote on the bill, but Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) signaled last week that she would object to a vote separate from Ukraine aid if he does.
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Last week, the White House declined to say whether it was willing to decouple the two forms of aid.
“I’m not going to get into hypotheticals of what it looks like if Congress comes back and wants to split the two. These are incredibly important, not just for the president, for the American people, right?” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on CNN. “We have to keep our commitments on both sides of these things.”
