At a time when damage estimates are still being gathered from Hurricane Irene, the White House last night asked Congress for at least another $5.2 billion in federal disaster aid funds.
"To be clear, this amount does not account for the devastation Hurricane Irene has inflicted on communities up and down the eastern part of the country," said White House budget chief Jack Lew.
"With four major disasters already declared, we know that the costs of this storm will be significant," said Lew, who added that no decision has been made on whether to ask Congress for extra Irene money as well.
"There is no way to predict in advance precisely what the cost of disaster relief will be in any given year," Lew added.
The request comes at a time when some Republicans have been making noise about forcing budget cuts to offset the cost of any extra disaster funding.
"My prayers are with hurricane and earthquake victims," said Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia, the GOP Freshman class President.
"We will assist them," Scott said, but "the money we spend must be offset."
But Scott and other Republicans might want to go back and look at the debt limit deal that was just approved by Congress a month ago, and dig deep into the fine print.
Because in that fine print is a plan that sets up a formula to determine how much can be spent on disaster aid each year - with that amount being declared "emergency spending" - which means it technically isn't added to the deficit.
"DISASTER FUNDING-
`(i) If, for fiscal years 2012 through 2021, appropriations for discretionary accounts are enacted that Congress designates as being for disaster relief in statute, the adjustment for a fiscal year shall be the total of such appropriations for the fiscal year in discretionary accounts designated as being for disaster relief, but not to exceed the total of--
`(I) the average funding provided for disaster relief over the previous 10 years, excluding the highest and lowest years"
Boil that down and what do you get?
"The average funding provided for disaster relief over the previous 10 years (excluding the highest and lowest years) is $11.3 billion for FY 2012," the White House reported last night.
So there you have it. The White House can get $11.3 billion out of the Congress for disaster relief in the next fiscal year, without having to agree to any budget cuts to pay for that.
How many lawmakers do you think read that section and realized what they were approving as part of the debt limit deal?
That means a lot of the recent talk about forcing budget cuts to pay for more FEMA disaster aid may be just that - talk.
