WASHINGTON -- Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday called on Congress to combine a $7.9 billion disaster relief package for Harvey with an increase in the nation's borrowing limit, saying it was time to "put politics aside" so storm victims in Texas can get the help they need.
"The president and I believe that it should be tied to the Harvey funding. Our first priority is to make sure that the state gets money," he said on Fox News Sunday. "It is critical, and to do that, we need to make sure we raise the debt limit."
President Donald Trump visited storm-ravaged areas in Texas on Saturday, expressing hope for speedy congressional action on relief aid. But some House conservatives have said directly pairing it with an increase in the debt limit would be a mistake that sends the wrong message on overall government spending.
Trump plans to meet with congressional leaders from both parties this week as lawmakers return to Washington after their summer recess.
The government's cash reserves are running low because the debt limit has actually already been reached, and the Treasury Department is using various accounting measures to cover expenses. Mnuchin originally had said that Congress would need to raise the $19.9 trillion borrowing limit by Sept. 29 to avoid a catastrophic default on the debt, allowing the government to continue borrowing money to pay bills such as Social Security and interest. But he said Sunday that deadline had moved up because of unexpected new spending on Harvey.
"Without raising the debt limit, I'm not comfortable that we would get the money that we need this month to Texas to rebuild," Mnuchin said.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, who had previously warned against attaching a debt-limit increase to Harvey aid, accused Mnuchin on Sunday of reneging on his prior rhetoric.
"I find it interesting that the secretary has long called for a clean debt ceiling and now suggests that we attach something to the debt ceiling vote," Meadows said. "There should be a clean bill; it's called the Hurricane Harvey relief bill."
In a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan requesting the storm aid, White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney on Friday stopped short of explicitly asking for the aid to be tied to raising the debt ceiling. But the letter makes clear that the emergency spending will move forward the deadline for raising the limit and conveys the idea that failure to lift it could imperil essential government services at a time when residents in Texas need the help.
The House plans to vote this week on Trump's request in initial disaster relief funding but Republican leaders don't plan to include a U.S. debt-limit increase in that legislation, two GOP congressional aides said before Mulvaney's letter was sent.
The Senate could attach the increase in U.S. borrowing authority to the hurricane relief package when it considers the legislation, and then send it back to the House. Neither Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell nor Ryan have indicated whether they would be supportive of that approach.
"Providing aid in the wake of Harvey and raising the debt ceiling are both important issues, and Democrats want to work to do both," said Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer of New York and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California in a joint statement Sunday. "Given the interplay between all the issues Congress must tackle in September, Democrats and Republicans must discuss all the issues together and come up with a bipartisan consensus."
Many House and Senate lawmakers have signaled support for a hurricane relief bill, but conservatives have warned against adding anything else to the legislation that would force them to vote against Harvey relief money.
"You don't want to look like you're blackmailing people into voting for a debt-ceiling bill or [a spending] bill by using Harvey," said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., a veteran GOP legislator and former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. "If it's part of a larger agreement and everybody's fine with that, well, then that's OK. But don't try to exploit a disaster for political purposes. I think it always gets you in trouble."
Added Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee: "To expect that we're just going to roll over for six or seven years in a row -- if you're running as someone who's concerned about how taxpayers' dollars are spent, at some point, there has to be a long-term game plan."
In an interview with a Milwaukee TV station that aired Sunday, Ryan did not address whether the two issues would be tied together, only expressing confidence that Congress will "step up" to fund disaster recovery efforts in Texas. "This is something that we've never seen before, so it's going to require a pretty unprecedented response," Ryan, R-Wis., said on UpFront with Mike Gousha.
Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of the Senate Republican leadership, said on NBC's Meet the Press he wouldn't be opposed to combining the two measures and said the urgency of Harvey disaster relief provides "another reason as to why you want to keep the government open."
"The president's attention to this issue, I think, puts another reason on the table to get things done in September," Blunt said.
Asked about Trump's past threats to force a government shutdown if Congress does not also include his $1.6 billion request for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, Mnuchin said Harvey aid was Trump's "first objective right now."
Trump's threat to shut down the government over funding for a border wall is now "off the table," said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa.
"We're going to spend time and energy building up flood walls," said Jim Dyer, a Washington lobbyist and Republican who previously served as the staff director of the House Appropriations Committee. "We're not going to be building up border walls."
Trump's aid request would add $7.4 billion to dwindling Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster aid coffers and $450 million to finance disaster loans for small businesses. An additional $5 billion to $8 billion for Harvey could be tucked into a catch-all spending bill Congress must pass in the coming weeks to fund the government past Sept. 30.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said his state may ultimately need more than the $120 billion that the U.S. spent on Hurricane Katrina recovery.
"When you look at the number of homes that have been mowed down and destroyed and damaged, this is going to be a huge catastrophe that people need to come to grips with," Abbott said on State of the Union on CNN. "It's going to take years for us to be able to overcome this challenge."
Abbott said Trump and Congress made it clear that the president's initial request for $7.85 billion "is just a down payment." The governor said more than 5 million people were affected by the storm, and both the population and geographic size involved are larger than they were for Katrina, which hit Louisiana in 2005, and Hurricane Sandy, which hit the northeast in 2012, combined.
More than 436,000 households have registered for FEMA aid, according to the White House.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, has called for $150 billion in federal aid. In an interview, she suggested that the number would eventually grow. "It's a start," she said.
But Republicans would almost certainly balk at such a huge sum being appropriated at once, and other lawmakers, including Dent, say it is far more likely that Congress will approve the aid in chunks.
Meanwhile, Texas Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz are coming under fire from Democrats, as well as Republicans in the Northeast, for their opposition to a $50.5 billion aid package in 2013 for victims of Hurricane Sandy. Cruz and other conservatives have argued that the bill was laden with pork-barrel spending. Now they will be forced to eat a little legislative crow, said John Feehery, a Republican strategist who spent years as a top aide on Capitol Hill.
"For a bunch of Texans who didn't know they cared about the federal government, they care now," Feehery said. "I don't think this is going to be a moment where Republicans and Democrats start singing 'Kumbaya,' but it's a pretty big crisis, and Congress can't just do nothing."
Jackson Lee, whose district includes part of Houston, spent much of last week at the city's convention center, which had been turned into an emergency shelter. She said she had spoken with Cruz, Ryan and Pelosi. All, she said, assured her that "there will be no sunshine between their commitment to helping this state."
As efforts proceed to respond to Harvey, FEMA is deploying assets to the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico in preparation for Hurricane Irma, the agency's administrator, Brock Long, said Sunday.
"We're shifting focus to Irma as well as maintaining the effort to make sure that we have recovery command established in Texas and Louisiana," Long said on CBS's Face the Nation.
"Individual assistance that's offered up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency is basically just a ray of hope," Long said on CBS. "The bottom line is is that it's not going to be enough to make anybody whole."
Those in the area who didn't have flood insurance may be eligible for federal funds to cover home repairs and other costs, he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Hope Yen of The Associated Press; by Laura Litvan, Mark Niquette, Margaret Talev, Erik Wasson, Jennifer Epstein, Justin Sink, Toluse Olorunnipa and Ben Brody of Bloomberg News; by Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times; and by Damian Paletta, Mike DeBonis and Ed O'Keefe of The Washington Post.
A Section on 09/04/2017