With the Southeastern United States dealing with the widespread devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene, President Joe Biden said on Monday that he expects to ask Congress for emergency relief funding and may request that lawmakers return to Washington, D.C. before the November elections to take up that legislation. Lawmakers left town last week to hit the campaign trail after passing a stopgap spending bill running through December 20, but that bill did not include additional disaster funding.
The hurricane, which made landfall Thursday night as a Category 4 storm before cutting across hundreds of miles from Florida to Tennessee, has left communities across the Southeast struggling to recover from massive flooding and damage as well as power and cellular service outages. It reportedly has led to at least 128 deaths, with hundreds more still missing.
“It’s not just a catastrophic storm. It’s a historic, history-making storm,” Biden said in remarks from the White House Monday morning.
The president said he plans to travel to North Carolina this week but is waiting to ensure that his visit won’t be disruptive to the crisis response efforts. “I’ve directed my team to provide every available resource as fast as possible to your communities to rescue, recover and to begin rebuilding,” Biden said. “I’m here to tell every single survivor in these impacted areas that we will be there with you as long as it takes.”
The hurricane response has quickly become a presidential campaign issue.
Vice President Kamala Harris canceled planned campaign stops Monday to return from Las Vegas to Washington, D.C., where she was scheduled to receive a briefing at the Federal Emergency Management Agency on the hurricane and response efforts. And former President Donald Trump visited Valdosta, Georgia, where he was briefed on the storm and helped deliver relief supplies, according to his campaign.
“As you know, our country is in the final weeks of a hard-fought national election,” Trump said. “But in a time like this when a crisis hits, when our fellow citizens cry out in need, none of that matters. We're not talking about politics now. We have to all get together and get this solved.”
Contrary to those remarks, though, Trump wasn’t setting aside the politics. On Sunday, he criticized the hurricane response from both Biden and Harris, claiming that the president was asleep in Delaware and that the vice president was too busy fund-raising. He kept up the attacks on Monday.
Biden pushed back on the criticism, telling reporters that he had led the response effort from his Delaware home. “I was commanding,” he said. “I was on the phone for at least two hours yesterday and the day before as well. I command. It’s called a telephone.”
Biden has approved major disaster declarations for Florida and North Carolina and emergency declarations for seven states: Florida and North Carolina as well as Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
