Shutdown averted; disaster aid dispute surmounted

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, speaks on his phone dur­ing a delay in vot­ing on a short-term fund­ing mea­sure that includes dol­lars for dis­as­ter relief with­out an off­set­ting spend­ing cut else­where, as demanded by the GOP-controlled House, on Capi­tol Hill in Wash­ing­ton, Mon­day, Sept. 26 2011. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

DAVID ESPO

AP Spe­cial Correspondent

WASHINGTON (AP) — End­ing weeks of polit­i­cal brinkman­ship, Con­gress finessed a dis­pute over dis­as­ter aid Mon­day night and advanced leg­is­la­tion to avoid a par­tial gov­ern­ment shut­down only days away.

The agree­ment ensured there would be no inter­rup­tion in assis­tance to areas bat­tered by dis­as­ters such as Hur­ri­cane Irene and last summer’s tor­na­dos in Joplin, Mo., and also that the gov­ern­ment would be able to run nor­mally when the new bud­get year begins on Saturday.

The Sen­ate approved the res­o­lu­tion after a day of behind-the-scenes talks and occa­sion­ally bit­ing debate, spelling an end to the lat­est in a string of stand­offs between Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans over deficits, spend­ing and taxes. Those fights have rat­tled finan­cial mar­kets and coin­cided with polls show­ing con­gres­sional approval rat­ings at his­tor­i­cally low levels

The break­through came hours after the Fed­eral Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency indi­cated it had enough money for dis­as­ter relief efforts through Fri­day. That dis­clo­sure allowed law­mak­ers to jet­ti­son a $1 bil­lion replen­ish­ment that had been included in the mea­sure — and to crack the grid­lock it had caused.

The Democratic-controlled Sen­ate approved the mea­sure on a bipar­ti­san vote of 79–12, send­ing it to the Republican-controlled House for a final sign-off.

There was no imme­di­ate com­ment from House GOP lead­ers, although their approval for the mea­sure seemed a mere for­mal­ity after the party’s Sen­ate leader agreed to it.

.”This com­pro­mise should sat­isfy Republicans…and it should sat­isfy Democ­rats,” said Sen­ate Major­ity leader Harry Reid, who added that Bud­get Direc­tor Jacob Lew had informed him that FEMA did not need any addi­tional fund­ing to meet its needs for the final few days of the bud­get year.

“It’s a win for every­one,” declared Reid, who had spent much of the past few weeks accus­ing Repub­li­cans of choos­ing to heed the wishes of tea party adher­ents rather than the needs of their own con­stituents bat­tered by acts of nature.

Sen­ate Repub­li­can leader Mitch McConnell of Ken­tucky said it was a “rea­son­able way to keep the gov­ern­ment operational.”

But he got in a final jab at Democ­rats, not­ing that the dis­as­ter funds sought by the Obama admin­is­tra­tion and its allies in Con­gress were now known to be unneeded.

“In my view, this entire fire drill was com­pletely unnec­es­sary,” he said.

But not even the dispute-resolving agree­ment pre­vented Democ­rats from pro­ceed­ing to a polit­i­cally charged vote ear­lier in the evening that was designed to force Repub­li­cans to decide whether imme­di­ate aid to dis­as­ter vic­tims or deficit con­cerns held a higher priority.

And the rhetoric was far harsher dur­ing the day on the Sen­ate floor, when Mary Lan­drieu, D-La., unleashed an unusu­ally per­sonal attack on House Major­ity Leader Eric Can­tor, R-Va., say­ing the weeks-long con­tro­versy started when he said, “Before we can pro­vide help we need to find off­sets in the budget.”

She called that “the Can­tor doc­trine” and said the con­tro­versy “could have been avoided if Can­tor had just said, ‘I’m sorry, but I made a mis­take.’ But instead of say­ing that, he dou­bled down,” she said.

Laena Fal­lon, a spokes­woman for Can­tor, responded that the Vir­ginia Repub­li­can had “never said the things she alleged, he has only sug­gested that we ought to pro­vide dis­as­ter aid dol­lars to those who need them in a respon­si­ble way — some­thing that she’s voted to block despite the urgent need.”

In fact, House Repub­li­cans insisted that any new dis­as­ter aid for the expir­ing bud­get year be off­set by cuts else­where in the bud­get, a deci­sion that Democ­rats seized on in hopes of reshap­ing the polit­i­cal ter­rain to their advantage.

Because the House is on a one-week break, it was not imme­di­ately clear how the leg­is­la­tion would be cleared for Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s signature.

Among the options are pas­sage of a tem­po­rary fund­ing mea­sure, to be passed in a brief ses­sion of the House planned for Thurs­day, that would keep gov­ern­ment agen­cies in funds until law­mak­ers return on Oct. 4. The Sen­ate approved the bill with­out objections.

Alter­na­tively, GOP lead­ers could call the full House back into ses­sion this week for a vote.

Either way, the agree­ment assures fund­ing until Nov. 18.

FEMA spokes­woman Rachel Racusen, said the agency had $114 mil­lion left in its dis­as­ter relief fund, enough to last until Thurs­day or Fri­day, the final busi­ness day of the cur­rent bud­get year. She said the exact tim­ing would depend on the num­ber of emer­gency vic­tims who apply for aid, and whether any new dis­as­ters occur.

FEMA offi­cials had said pre­vi­ously the funds would run out early this week. That con­cern prompted the Obama admin­is­tra­tion a few weeks ago to ask Con­gress to approve a replen­ish­ment to tide the agency over through the Sept. 30 end to the fis­cal year.

House Repub­li­cans agreed weeks ago to pro­vide $1 bil­lion and include the money in a bill that also pro­vides money for most fed­eral agen­cies for the first few weeks of the 2012 bud­get year. At the same time, they insisted on cut­ting spend­ing else­where in the bud­get by $1.5 bil­lion to pre­vent the deficit from ris­ing, an amount later raised to $1.6 billion.

That, in turn, pro­duced a quick attack from Sen­ate Democ­rats, who opposed cuts.

While it was unclear pre­cisely how long FEMA’s remain­ing funds would last, one offi­cial said the agency began con­serv­ing funds last month as Hur­ri­cane Irene approached the U.S. main­land, pri­or­i­tiz­ing its aid to help indi­vid­ual dis­as­ter vic­tims and pay states and local gov­ern­ments for imme­di­ate needs such as remov­ing debris and build­ing sand bag barricades.

Fund­ing of $450 mil­lion has been put on hold for longer-term needs such as recon­struc­tion of dam­aged roads, the offi­cial said. In addi­tion, the agency has been able to reclaim unused money from past dis­as­ters, accord­ing to the offi­cial, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity, cit­ing lack of author­ity to dis­cuss the mat­ter publicly.

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