Trump tours Puerto Rico, touts aid flow; he contrasts death count with Katrina ‘catastrophe’

President Donald Trump on Tuesday told Puerto Rican officials that they should feel "very proud" they haven't lost hundreds of lives like in "a real catastrophe like Katrina," while adding that the devastated island territory has thrown the U.S. budget "a little out of whack."

Trump made the remarks in San Juan during his first visit to Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria ravaged the island nearly two weeks ago. He has faced criticism for the slow federal assistance after the natural disaster, although earlier in the day he touted his administration's "great job" and "A-plus" response to it.

"Every death is a horror, but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous -- hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you look at what happened here, with really a storm that was just totally overpowering, nobody's ever seen anything like this," Trump said, before turning to a local official to ask how many people had died because of Hurricane Maria. "What is your death count as of this moment? 17? 16 people certified, 16 people versus in the thousands."

Trump then praised officials in the room over the low death toll, which Gov. Ricardo Rossello said Tuesday evening had more than doubled, to 34.

The president then said of the U.S. hurricane relief sent to the island: "I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you've thrown our budget a little out of whack."

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., noted that the president never made such comments in Texas or Florida after hurricanes hit there.

"Mr. President, enough," said Schumer, whose state has the largest population of Puerto Ricans in the mainland United States. "Stop blaming Puerto Rico for the storm that devastated their shores. Roll up your sleeves and get the response on track."

Schumer added, "When one part of the country has trouble, the rest of the country reaches out and says, 'We're going to help you.'"

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A senior administration official and top congressional aides said Tuesday night that the administration is finalizing an overall $29 billion disaster aid package to address needs from this summer's three major hurricanes that hit the U.S. The package combines $16 billion to shore up the government-backed flood insurance program with almost $13 billion in new relief for hurricane victims.

The request is expected to be officially sent to Congress today. The $29 billion measure is not yet public, and its perimeters were outlined by officials who demanded anonymity.

The aid request would address two pressing needs. The first is to pump money into the flood insurance program, which is rapidly running out of cash to pay an influx of claims from victims of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. At the same time, the Federal Emergency Management Agency continues to spend money for disaster relief operations at a high rate and requires more money.

The government-guaranteed flood insurance program is maxing out a $30 billion line of credit from the Treasury. The proposal would wipe $16 billion of that debt off the books to permit the program to pay claims from hurricane victims.

Under the proposed measure, almost $13 billion is being requested for FEMA. Federal firefighting accounts would receive $577 million of it to replenish them after a disastrous wildfire season in the West.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said he had met Tuesday with lawmakers from Texas and Florida to brief them on the White House request.

"Remember, this is emergency money. You've got to deal with the problem," McCarthy told reporters. "So I think we'll be able to get this done."

IN PUERTO RICO

Trump's response to Maria contrasted with his actions in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, which ravaged southeast Texas. Trump visited Texas twice in the week after Harvey made landfall, first to check in on relief efforts, and then to visit with the victims and dole out hugs and prayers.

Though Trump and his administration initially offered a flurry of action as Maria tore through Puerto Rico, the president then effectively went silent, spending a long weekend at his private club in Bedminster, N.J.

The president has at points seemed to blame Puerto Ricans for their plight. After the mayor of San Juan pleaded on cable television for the federal government to "save us from dying," he accused her of having "poor leadership ability," and he wrote on Twitter that the island's citizens "want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort."

After Trump's impromptu remarks to officials Tuesday, his motorcade drove along a San Juan highway lined with broken highway dividers and hundreds of downed trees. He took a walking tour of Guaynabo, a municipality south of San Juan, stopping to pose for photos with locals and to chat about the hurricane and basketball. As he finished talking with one family, he told them: "Have a good time."

Trump also stopped by a church to meet with dozens of locals who asked for selfies, shouted that they loved him and held signs that read: "Proud Americans," "Let's Make Puerto Rico Great Again" and "God bless You, Mr. President." Trump stood behind a table filled with relief supplies, including flashlights, rice and paper towels. At one point, Trump tossed rolls of paper towels into the friendly crowd.

"There's a lot of love in this room, a lot of love," Trump said. "Great people."

The president, who was accompanied by the first lady, was not expected to stray far from San Juan, Puerto Rico's capital and largest city, where recovery is much further along than in much of the rest of the territory. He met with local officials, including Rossello, as well as senior military personnel on the ground and Gov. Kenneth Mapp of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Carmen Yulin Cruz, the San Juan mayor who has been deeply critical of the U.S. government's relief efforts and whom Trump criticized on Twitter, joined Trump for his first briefing on the island.

Cruz shook the president's hand and said she hoped that he now understands the gravity of the situation. But his comment implying that Maria was not a Katrina-level event left her unsure.

"Sometimes his style of communication gets in the way," she told CNN. "I would hope that the president of the United States stops spouting out comments that really hurt the people of Puerto Rico."

On a more positive note, Cruz said, "I saw a real connection between the reality and the White House staff. I think they finally understood." In a tweet, she excluded the president as she credited his people with now understanding "the disconnect between how things are supposed to happen and how they really happen."

'AN A-PLUS'

Trump's mixed reviews for his Puerto Rico response so far did not stop him from lavishing praise on his administration.

As the president, wearing a black Windbreaker and khakis, left the White House for Puerto Rico, he said San Juan's mayor has "come back a long way." Then he returned to touting his administration's performance in Puerto Rico.

"I think it's now acknowledged what a great job we've done, and people are looking at that," he said. "And in Texas and in Florida, we get an A-plus. And I'll tell you what, I think we've done just as good in Puerto Rico, and it's actually a much tougher situation. But now the roads are cleared, communications is starting to come back. We need their truck drivers to start driving trucks."

Trump thanked Rossello for positive comments that Rossello had made about the administration's work in Puerto Rico, saying, "He has said we have done an incredible job, and that's the truth."

And the president asked Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, Puerto Rico's only congressional representative, to repeat some of the praise she had shared in television interviews.

"She was saying such nice things about all of the people that have worked so hard," Trump said. "Jenniffer, do you think you could say a little bit what you said about us today? And it's not about me, it's about these incredible people, from the military to FEMA, to first responders. I mean, I've never seen people working so hard in my life."

After Gonzalez-Colon finished speaking and thanked Trump for his help, the president said, "Well, I want to thank you because you were really generous. And I saw those comments, and everybody saw those comments, and we really appreciate it."

Even before the storm hit on Sept. 20, Puerto Rico was in dire condition thanks to a decadelong economic recession that had left its infrastructure, including the island's power lines, in a dilapidated state.

Maria was the most powerful hurricane to hit the island in nearly a century, and unleashed floods and mudslides that knocked out the island's entire electrical grid and telecommunications system, along with many roads. Nearly two weeks after the storm, 95 percent of electricity customers remain without power, including some hospitals.

FEMA said more than 10,000 federal officials now are on the ground on the island, and 45 percent of customers now have access to drinking water. Businesses are also beginning to reopen, with 60 percent of retail gas stations now up and running. Rossello has said he hopes 25 percent of electricity customers will have power by the end of October.

Alejandro De La Campa, the coordinating officer for FEMA in Puerto Rico, said Tuesday that officials so far have installed 22 generators, primarily at high-priority facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is deciding where to install 100 additional generators, and another 300 are said to be en route to the island.

Officials said about $28 million had been approved for local municipalities for debris removal and other services.

Still, De La Campa said, recovery efforts in the interior of the island continue to lag because many of the roads remain inaccessible.

In the heart of San Juan, a few miles from the air base where Trump gave his thumbs-up on progress on the island, people stacked sewage-fouled clothes and mattresses outside houses and businesses that still lack electricity nearly two weeks after the storm.

"Nobody's come," said Ray Negron, 38, collecting debris in the Playita neighborhood.

Information for this article was contributed by Ashley Parker, Jenna Johnson and Ed O'Keefe of The Washington Post; by Jill Colvin, Calvin Woodward, Andrew Taylor, Danica Coto, Michael Weissenstein, Catherine Lucey and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of The Associated Press; and by Jack Healy, Frances Robles and Ron Nixon of The New York Times.

A Section on 10/04/2017