Republican congressmen who voted against an $7.85 billion relief package for Hurricane Harvey victims defended their votes Wednesday by saying the measure lacked necessary spending offsets.
The House overwhelmingly passed the measure in a 419-3 vote. Three Republicans voted against it: Reps. Justin Amash of Michigan, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
“With $20 trillion dollars of debt, and in the absence of a budget to guide spending, I believe that unscheduled spending should be offset by equal cuts elsewhere. This bill recklessly increases the national debt because it contains no spending offsets,” Massie told the Washington Examiner through a spokesperson.
The bill includes $7.4 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund and an additional $450 million for the Small Business Administration’s Disaster Loan Program.
Amash announced on Twitter that he opposed the measure because it only furthered the nation’s debt and didn’t provide immediate funding.
Congress should provide disaster relief funding, and we should pay for it now instead of billing our children and grandchildren for it.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) September 6, 2017
“Congress should provide disaster relief funding, and we should pay for it now instead of billing our children and grandchildren for it,” Amash tweeted.
Biggs said he voted no because the funding was attached to a measure he felt would unnecessarily grow government.
“Shortly before today’s vote, with little time to read the final version of the package, the House attached hurricane relief funding to the READ Act, a bill that expands the size of government and ties foreign assistance to new education programs in developing countries,” Biggs said in a statement.
“I firmly disagree with attaching disaster relief funding to a piece of legislation that needlessly expends taxpayer dollars to support international education.”
Senate Republicans have hinted they plan to attach language to raise the nation’s borrowing limit to the Harvey funding bill once the Senate receives it.
“The House also failed to detail how we will pay for the relief but managed to include an international education program. It is our understanding that this bill will be combined with an effort to increase our debt ceiling,” Biggs added.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced Wednesday he supported a deal brokered by President Trump and congressional Democrats to extend federal spending and borrowing authority for the next three months.
