Hurricane Helene last week became the deadliest hurricane to hit the United States mainland since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, killing more than 200 people and causing unimaginable devastation across six states after making landfall along the Florida coast.
While people continue to grieve those lost and witness the horrific damage caused by this hurricane, with many parts of the Southeast simply unrecognizable in the hurricane’s aftermath, questions have predictably started to swirl regarding the political response, with a particular focus on where all the money has gone.
According to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the Federal Emergency Management Agency “does not have the funds” to get through hurricane season.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” Mayorkas said, referencing the hurricane season that runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, with most hurricanes hitting in September and October. “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.”
Excuse me?
It’s utterly galling to hear the Biden administration complaining that the federal entity dedicated to responding to national crises is lacking in funds while even the most clownish projects never cease to run out of financial support.
Don’t forget: This is the same federal government that “found” $891 billion for the oxymoronic Inflation Reduction Act and a trifling $80 billion to send to Ukraine.
And what about its shameless illegal immigration campaign? As Brian Cavanaugh, visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center and former FEMA official, told me, the Biden-Harris administration “deliberately abandoned FEMA’s core mission of helping Americans before, during, and after disasters” for “purely ideological reasons.”
Why? To “facilitate the mass migration of illegal aliens into the country.”
Under Mayorkas and his Department of Homeland Security, $640.9 million this year alone has been spent on reshuffling (often to swing states) and housing illegal migrants as part of $1.4 billion spent since the fall of 2022 on the entirely voluntary migrant crisis.
Strange how these initiatives never run out of cash.
Given the government’s shopaholic-like addiction to spending our money, putting the nation’s debt well over $35 trillion, it’s shocking to see Mayorkas complain about FEMA’s lack of funds for actual emergencies after the Biden administration and its Democratic Party comrades have spent years treating the nation’s finances (including FEMA’s emergency food and shelter program) like their own personal piggy bank.
In this case, the Biden administration didn’t just cry wolf. It spent all of our wolf-defense money on diversity, equity, and inclusion; Ukraine; and illegal immigrants.
And, of course, let’s not forget the empathy. The entire Biden administration is populated with people whose immediate response to any disaster under a Republican president is to ask, through distressed brows, crocodile tears, and wringing hands, “Where are they?”
So, where are they?
President Joe Biden was in his beach home in Delaware, declaring from the doorway that he was “commanding it” after being on the phone for at least two whole hours. Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared, with the obligatory disaster jacket with an oversized logo, to announce that families affected by Hurricane Helene will receive a whole $750 each.
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That’s $50 more than the victims of the fires in Maui got, and a total of $636.9 million less than Mayorkas spent on countless illegal immigrants this year.
To be fair, Biden and Harris are the faces of compassion. The problem is that their compassion is expressed with our money and reserved for illegal immigrants, DEI, and corrupt Ukrainian officials instead of the people they claim to represent.
Ian Haworth is a columnist, speaker, and podcast host. You can find him on Substack and follow him on X at @ighaworth.