Congressional Republicans’ bold suggestion that future disaster funding be tied to forest management reforms or a debt ceiling increase is prompting stern warnings that the maneuver could harm wildfire victims and backfire politically.
Democrats came out in force Monday to blast the strategy that Republican lawmakers and President-elect Donald Trump concocted over the weekend, calling it a political ploy that could undermine recovery efforts and put Republicans on a slippery slope.
“I cannot think of anything less wise than tying relief to other political issues,” said Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the House’s top Democratic appropriator. “That we would condition disaster aid is unthinkable.”
The clash is illustrative of the building frustration over the deadly wildfires that are still growing around Los Angeles, and it threatens to complicate the outlook for supplemental disaster aid this spring.
The ongoing discussion among Republican lawmakers also signals the beginning of a nasty fight over wildfire, drought and land management policy that is all but certain to intensify this Congress under Republican leadership.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters Monday that “we’ve got to have a serious conversation” about conditioning disaster aid, pointing to “water resource mismanagement, forest management mistakes, all sorts of problems,” to which Republicans have been attributing California’s wildfires.
Johnson, who supported the $100 billion disaster relief bill that Congress passed last month, said Monday that the need to put guardrails on future aid was his “personal view” and that Republican lawmakers are still discussing the idea.
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that “there can’t be a blank check on this” and that he expected “there will be strings attached to money that is ultimately approved” because of California’s “gross failure” to prevent the blazes.
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) told Fox News that “California wants the money without changing the policies that are making the problem bad or worse,” including forest management.
And Rep. Tom McClintock, a California Republican who represents part of the Sierra Nevada, penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal blaming environmental laws and what he sees as lax forest management for the fires’ spread.
“The tragedy in Southern California is the result of decades of self-destructive policies by foolish politicians,” McClintock said, lamenting declines in timber harvesting and livestock grazing to keep growth in check.
Davidson suggested that California be forced to change its land management or forestry policies to mitigate future fires in order to receive the funding, though he did not lay out specific changes. Others have floated attaching language to raise the debt ceiling, a politically charged process that Republicans could struggle to approve on their own given conservative resistance.
Congressional Republicans are not wholly united on the disaster aid issue. Multiple lawmakers told POLITICO’s E&E News on Monday that they would not back efforts to threaten to withhold aid in order to advance a specific policy priority. Given the fractured state of the Republican conference, that kind of division could doom the proposal early.
But the strategy is weighing heavy on Democrats. Many have pointed to Trump’s efforts during his first term to delay the delivery of disaster relief to California and other states that he considered politically hostile to him.
“Relief for disaster victims should never be held hostage, particularly in an effort to help President Trump and Republicans raise the debt ceiling so they can dole out more tax cuts to billionaires,” said Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray (D-Wash.), whose home state Trump targeted in 2020 by refusing to approve disaster funding.
Disaster aid ‘proxy war’
President Joe Biden has already declared the fires a major disaster and has said the federal government will cover 100 percent of the costs for the first six months.
Trump, who takes office next week, could slow walk the delivery of some disaster aid, and the Republican-led Congress is in position to prevent the appropriation of more money if they so choose.
Some Democrats said there would be consequences for Republicans if they went down the path of making aid conditional.
“This is a Mistake. If you start this, it will never end,” Florida Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a former emergency management director, wrote on X. “When Dems retake the House, they will condition aid to Florida and Texas. Disaster Aid must stay non partisan.”
Moskowitz, one of Congress biggest disaster relief boosters, said in a brief interview last month that if one party begins withholding aid to achieve a policy or political goal, “what happens is it becomes a proxy war.”
He pointed to some Republicans’ refusal to support disaster aid after Superstorm Sandy slammed the mostly Democratic Northeast in 2012 and the way some Democrats resisted support for disaster aid following Hurricane Harvey’s catastrophic landfall in Texas in 2017.
“Since then, we’ve had a detente,” Moskowitz said, “and I hope it stays that way.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), ranking member on the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, which funds the Federal Emergency Management Agency, suggested that Republicans’ proposal was disingenuous and malicious.
“C’mon. We aren’t idiots,” he wrote on X. “Republicans never ask for ‘strings’ attached to disaster funding for Republican states. This isn’t about helping California. This is about punishing California because it votes for Democrats.”
A spokesperson for FEMA did not respond to a request for comment.
Rep. Judy Chu, a Los Angeles-area Democrat, said on CBS on Sunday that she and other Democrats have invited Johnson and Trump to tour the devastation in her district. Congressional Republicans have expressed interest, she said.
“These wildfires don’t have any political affiliation; they don’t belong to any political party,” Chu said.
Debate on water, land management
Congressional advocates for a more intensive approach to forest management — including more thinning and harvesting of trees — seized on the California wildfires to make their point and, in some cases, to say disaster aid should be linked to such policies.
Sen. Cyntia Lummis (R-Wyo.) accused Democratic-led states of not enacting good land management policies out of deference to environmental advocates and suggested that practice be corrected by conditioning disaster aid.
“They are very resistant to finding solutions that are not accepted by the environmental community,” she said, “so we need to try to come up with solutions that will separate good policy from the people who are fighting against good policy.”
House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) said Monday evening that he planned to reintroduce his bipartisan “Fix Our Forests Act” with Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) as soon as this week. He said he expects House leaders to move on it quickly.
The bill would ease permitting hurdles and limit litigation against forest thinning projects meant to prevent wildfires. It passed the House last year with bipartisan support.
Westerman noted that he was not in favor of using disaster aid as a bargaining chip to get his bill passed, even though he believes its provisions would have helped address the vegetation conditions in the Santa Monica Mountains that helped the wildfires grow so quickly.
“I would rather focus on policy that’s going to fix forest management and not make that some necessary part of disaster relief,” he said. He also noted the high human and financial costs of the wildfires.
“If we had spent, in comparison, a tiny fraction of money on prevention, then maybe this wouldn’t be nearly as bad,” Westerman said. “We should take this lesson and go to other places and do everything we can to prevent these disasters from happening the next time.”
Some environmental and forest policy groups pushed back at the notion of conditioning aid on policy dictates.
They also noted that the Los Angeles fires by and large are burning not in forests but in residential areas and in landscapes dominated by brush and chaparral which have become especially dry because of the lack of rain. Hurricane-force Santa Ana winds accelerated their spread.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat whom Republicans have targeted in recent days, launched a website devoted to debunking what he called lies about the wildfires. During his term, Newsom said, the state has increased spending on forest management tenfold, to more than $2 billion annually.
The fires also haven’t primarily been linked to state-managed lands, nor to federal land where Republican lawmakers are most outspoken about doing more to thin forest overgrowth. Fires have raged on land with a variety of public and private ownership. Officials haven’t pinpointed how the fires ignited.
The National Association of State Foresters wouldn’t support withholding disaster aid for changes in state forest policy, said Jay Farrell, the organization’s executive director.
Every state is different, in terms of the best type of management for the lands in question, Farrell said. But he said his group generally believes in “active management” such as thinning vegetation or reducing it through prescribed fire to cut down on potential wildfire fuel.
“We’re supportive of accelerating the pace and scale of forest management,” Farrell said.
