Congress will return and go into the replenishment business, as in rescue FEMA and the Small Business Administration from shortfalls in the budget department. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin got an update on this and other Hill matters from WTOP Capitol Hill Correspondent Mitchell Miller.

Interview transcript:

Mitchell Miller Well, this is going to be a big thing when Congress gets back and a lot of people actually want Congress to come back early. There was a big push for getting people back this month. But of course, everybody is campaigning. And House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) just said that there was no way that they were going to get back before the election. Now, he points out that a lot of these estimates for damages and everything has to still be compiled over the next few weeks and months. And so he believes that there will be the money that is necessary to help all of these people in these damaged states from Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Now, a lot of other lawmakers, particularly from those states, say this is really pressing and it needs to be done now. Nonetheless, when they get back, FEMA will clearly need more money because ultimately it is going to run out while there are billions of dollars now in the pipeline. The FEMA Director, [Deanne] Criswell, has indicated that ultimately is going to run out in the coming months just because there’s been so much damage and so much assistance needed. And then, in the middle of that, the Small Business Administration, which also provides assistance to businesses as well as homeowners, has run out of money. Now there is no money there. However, the White House and other people are encouraging people to still apply for loans because they say that the money will eventually get back in the pipeline when Congress returns. But clearly, this is going to be right at the top of the agenda when lawmakers get back, and they don’t get back until November 12th, a week after the election.

Tom Temin Golly, when you think of everything going on, that they’re gone so long. Well, on the other hand, nothing terrible can happen, I guess, if they’re not in town either.

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Mitchell Miller That’s one way to look at it. Yes.

Tom Temin Beyond federal funds, this whole FEMA personnel business, any Hill reaction? There’s been lots of political reaction in other quarters to this whole FEMA web page rumor mill that’s been going on.

Mitchell Miller Right. This has been a big point of discussion among Democrats and Republicans as we go toward the election. And, of course, former President Trump has said a lot of things about FEMA funding. Some of that just simply not true, essentially saying that money from FEMA was taken from the agency and given to migrants who are here illegally to help them settle in cities and communities across the country. There is money to do that, but that was approved by Congress well earlier in the year. And it comes from a totally different bucket of money than the actual FEMA federal disaster aid money comes from. And so what FEMA has done has actually created its own web page that just goes point by point on all these — some of them crazy — rumors that have happened to come up in connection with all of these things going on. Among them that FEMA officials, when they come out to a certain part of the country, that they are going to be ready to seize the land of people; believe it or not, that one has been bubbling up. FEMA has, of course, flatly denied that this has happened. There have actually been threats against FEMA members coming out to various parts of the country. So it’s really caused a lot of consternation. This used to be a really basic, simple thing that the government does. That it provides assistance to people that need it when there is an emergency, a natural disaster. It traditionally has bipartisan support. And that’s not to say that it doesn’t have bipartisan support now, but because we are so close to the election, each side is pushing back on various things. There have been several Republican lawmakers who have also echoed these charges that former President Trump has made and basically have been trying to portray the federal response as a disaster, as the former president calls it. Whereas FEMA has pushed back on that. Democrats and many Republicans actually in these states have also pushed back, saying they are getting the assistance they need.

Tom Temin Well, I guess you have to pick your source of truth these days, which is kind of a sad commentary. Mitchell Miller is the WTOP correspondent at Capitol Hill. And Hatch Act violations are popping up, maybe because of the intensity of this election, which I think probably is as strong as 1860 or something.

Mitchell Miller I mean, this is something that we know comes up in every election. But some people I know, federal workers are very, very cognizant of it. And there’s an effort really to make sure that people know that the Hatch Act is still enforced. And there was a federal worker who was recently suspended from their job in connection with putting out things on Facebook, basically, that were indicators of fundraisers coming up or events coming up for the candidate that they supported. They weren’t necessarily really overtly partisan type of things, but of course, doing this on government time, putting it up on Facebook during those periods, that is against the Hatch Act. And so there was a release put out last week stating stating that this person is being penalized because of this. Just another reminder that people need to be careful as we move toward Election Day.

Tom Temin And there’s an interesting deadline for feds that we have been talking about for some years now. But the deadline just passed on certain record submissions.

Mitchell Miller This is really interesting. Many people know them as UFOs. They have since been renamed “unidentified anomalous phenomena.” But over the last few years, Congress has actually taken a very interesting look at what has been out in space. Are there really things that we don’t know that are floating around out there? And to that end, federal agencies are taking this, I think, more seriously than they did in the past. And they had until Sunday, basically October 20th, to submit documents to the National Archives and Records Administration on those unidentified, anomalous phenomena, otherwise known as UFOs, that there are any kind of communications or photos or documentation related to how the agencies dealt with reports of that. They have been asked to put all of this to the National Archives and Records Administration, and then they’re going to actually catalog all of this and try to put it in an orderly fashion so that the public can actually see what is out there. What do we know is really out in space? It’s a really fascinating part of what the government is doing right now.

Tom Temin I can envision someone taking all those records, scanning them and feeding them to ChatGPT to find out what’s really going on.

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Mitchell Miller There you go. You never know what you’re going to get from ChatGPT. Maybe ChatGPT knows more than we know about what is out there.

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