Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has warned that it has run out of funding at the beginning of America’s hurricane season. Last month, the agency testified before Congress that it still has $4 billion in its Disaster Relief Fund, then claimed that Hurricane Helene wiped through the budget. The agency has been begging Congress to approve additional funding, but a new report found that FEMA has at least $8.3 billion in unused funds.
“We are expecting another hurricane hitting. We do not have the funds. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season and what is imminent,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced on October 2. Joe Biden warned that the federal government has already provided the victims, 600 who are still missing, with all the aid he was willing to provide. Where has all the money gone?
“They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season,” former President Donald Trump said. FEMA was indeed tasked with providing money to Customs and Border Protection back in 2022 to help communities overrun with illegal migrants. In fact, FEMA provided $640 million in grants to Customs and Border Protection in 2024 alone, and spent $364 on the migrant crisis in 2023. This is merely one of countless programs misusing federal funds on non-citizens.
Yet, Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General issued a report that reveals FEMA still has billions in unused aid. “As of October 2022, FEMA estimated that 847 disaster declarations with approximately $73 billion in unliquidated funds remained open,” the report noted.
The agency is simply corrupt. FEMA still has $4.5 billion in frozen unused funds from Hurricane Sandy that hit 12 years ago, yet the deadline for this project was extended into 2026. Officials continue to extend deadlines and freeze funds with no clear indication as to why. Jeremy Portnoy of OpenTheBooks, a nonpartisan watchdog of government spending, claims that “all the money is just sitting there.” He has stated that FEMA is freezing “unliquidated obligations” at a time when it could easily reappoint those funds for immediate disaster relief. A separate DHS report believes “the potential risk for fraud, waste, and abuse increases the longer a program remains open.”
The agency has allegedly run out of funds from its Disaster Relief Fund on nine occasions since 2001. We are seeing countless reports on the ground of FEMA selectively distributing supplies. Private contractors who secured lucrative government deals are earning big while the government actively prevents individual citizens from assisting in rescuing efforts and delivering aid. The media is now claiming that the GOP simply does not want to grant FEMA additional funding, but why should we provide this agency with additional funding that could potentially go missing or become wrapped up in red tape? FEMA is certainly not a philanthropist organization as it operate just as any other public government entity where budgets are forged and the people at the top are profiting on the backs of taxpayers.
