The
president claims $92 billion has been distributed to Puerto Rico. It's only
been a fraction of that.
ZACK FORD in ThinkProgress
Donald Trump is already trying to avoid responsibility for providing relief aid
to Puerto Rico for a storm that hasn’t even impacted the island yet.
In a tweet
Tuesday, Trump repeated a lie that the island territory has already received
far more aid than it actually had, and seemed to blame Puerto Rico for its own
fate.
“Will
it ever end?” Trump wrote, seemingly speaking more about the relief costs than
the catastrophic weather. “Congress approved 92 Billion Dollars for Puerto Rico
last year, an all time record of its kind for ‘anywhere’.”
Earlier
this year, Trump claimed that Puerto Rico had received $91 billion, so he seems
to have inflated the number by a billion. But his claim that Puerto Rico had
already received that much money, or that it had otherwise been spent — as
insinuated again by his tweet Tuesday — is demonstrably false.
The federal
government’s own records tell a very different story.
It’s true that Congress has allocated a large sum of money, but that was still only around $42 billion — $50 billion short of Trump’s latest number.
So
far, federal agencies are committed (“obligated”) to spending about $20 billion
of that, meaning that half of the funds haven’t even been touched. Even that
figure only speaks to how much of the money has been budgeted.
Since Hurricanes
Irma and Maria struck Puerto Rico two years ago, only about $13 billion has
actually been spent repairing the island. This represents a seventh of Trump’s
claim.
When
Trump first told his $91 billion-dollar lie in April, he added his own random estimate of
an additional $50 billion for “estimated future FEMA costs over the life of the
disaster.”
In other words, Trump just assumed of his own accord that repairing
Puerto Rico was going to cost more than twice what had been allocated — and
then claimed that such a total had already been spent.
But
it hasn’t. And claiming that Congress had allocated that total amount itself is
a new twist on the lie.
Shortly
after Trump tweeted, NBC News reported that
the administration is actually taking $271 million away from the Department of
Homeland Security, including FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund, to pay for more
immigration detention space and asylum hearing locations along the southern
border.
It did not ask Congress for permission to make the reallocation,
believing it had the authority itself. The Department of Homeland Security will
lose funding for Coast Guard operations, and FEMA will lose funding budgeted to
prepare for natural disasters like hurricanes.
Trump’s
complaint Tuesday that he may have to provide more disaster relief to Puerto
Rico in the near future comes just days after Axios reported that
Trump in the past had allegedly suggested using a nuclear weapon to somehow
destroy hurricanes. Trump publicly denied the
story in a tweet calling it “just more FAKE NEWS.”
Given
Trump’s penchant for lashing out at stories that paint him in a
negative light, the response has only fueled speculation that he did propose
such an idea.
Tropical
Storm Dorian is still weak, but forecasters predict it
could upgrade to a hurricane as it travels through the Caribbean. According to
the National Hurricane Center Tuesday morning,
“Tropical storm conditions are expected and hurricane conditions are possible
in Puerto Rico on Wednesday.”
Puerto
Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez declared a state of emergency Monday to prepare for
what could be coming. Some 30,000 homes on the island still have blue
tarps as roofs — a testament to how much has actually been spent repairing the
island.