Vice President Mike Pence on Monday said he anticipated that Congress will approve some sort of funding package to assist recovery efforts associated with Hurricane Harvey.
“I think what you’re going to see is that the national government, and we anticipate the Congress, are going to make the resources available to see Texas through the rescue operation, through the recovery,” Mr. Pence said in an interview with KTRH radio.
“We’ll be there through recovery. We’ll see Houston all the way back,” he said.
President Trump has already issued a major disaster declaration for Texas and an emergency declaration for Louisiana, allowing the federal government to direct resources to specific areas in the states affected by the heavy rainfall and flooding.
Mr. Pence said there are more than 8,000 federal officials in the area and that they’ve shipped more than 1.2 million meals and one million liters of water.
He encouraged listeners to heed the directions of local emergency management officials, and to call 911 if they are in “immediate” need of medical attention or evacuation assistance.
“The focus today is on making sure that we’re doing everything to get people out of harm’s way, and that includes an enormous volunteer effort,” he said.
But an emergency spending package for Harvey would add another item to an already sizable to-do list for Congress when lawmakers return from a monthlong break in September. They already face end-of-September deadlines to increase the nation’s debt limit and fund the federal government past Sept. 30.
“We will tailor this only to the needs, I hope,” Rep. Pete Sessions, Texas Republican, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“The package needs to represent the real need, and in Texas, I can’t even begin to understand how large” it is, he said. “If the package is in any bloated, it will have problems.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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