Congress braces for California wildfire fallout

House lawmakers are bracing for what could be a contentious battle over emergency spending in the wake of the wildfires that are tearing through Southern California — an unprecedented disaster that’s already estimated to have caused more than $50 billion in damage in and around Los Angeles. 

While both parties united quickly in December to provide more than $100 billion in emergency aid for hurricanes and other disasters, the wild card this time around will be President-elect Trump, who is already blaming California Democrats for the scale of the destruction. 

The debate won’t happen immediately. The fires are still raging; the ultimate price tag is yet unknown; and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) says it has enough cash on hand to respond to a number of disasters around the country, including the California wildfires, in the near term.

Still, those emergency funds will have to be replenished at some point in the not-too-distant future, when Trump is in the White House. That’s creating uncertainty because the incoming president has long-accused FEMA of mismanaging funds, including last year when he claimed falsely that the agency had redirected disaster aid to house migrants who lack permanent legal status. And some GOP leaders — who are already under pressure from their right flank to slash deficit spending — are also airing concerns about how FEMA manages its operations. 

“There’s some very patriotic people that work for FEMA on the ground, they do their dead-level best. But as with any organization: It’s leadership, and there is some concern about it,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters Thursday in the Capitol. 

“I frankly have not had a lot of time to dig into what’s happening in California at the moment because we’ve got so much going on,” Johnson added. “But I’m sure I’ll be getting a full brief.”

Across the aisle, Democratic leaders like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) say they’re prepared to provide whatever assistance is deemed necessary after the fires have been brought under control and the damage assessed. And Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, delivered a similar message this week, noting that lawmakers will have to “wait for requests from the administration.”

“The reality is, you’ve got to wait till the disaster is over,” Cole said. “It's clearly not yet, and you've got to give them time to do the estimates.” He also said the matter likely will “be something the Trump administration will have a lot to say about a little bit down the road.”

Complicating the debate, Trump has yet to name the figure he wants to lead FEMA, although Johnson said he has faith in the president’s eventual choice. 

“We live in a dangerous time, there are disasters all the time now, and you’ve got to have steady, competent people at the top. So I’m confident he’ll put the right people in place,” Johnson said.

Complicating it further, Trump is already teeing off on California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and other California Democrats, saying it’s their incompetence that’s led directly to the failure to contain the deadly fires even days after they began. 

“Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

Newsom’s office responded in kind, accusing Trump of fabricating events to score political points. 

“There is no such document as the water restoration declaration — that is pure fiction,” the governor’s office posted on the social platform X. “The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need.”

The tenor of the clash is nothing new. Trump has frequently used natural disasters to denounce his political enemies. And deep blue California — where Newsom is thought to have presidential ambitions of his own — has been a favorite target.

What remains unclear is the extent to which Trump’s feud with Newsom — combined with his infamous penchant for retribution — will affect the congressional debate over wildfire aid. 

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) suggested this week that GOP leaders have been expecting to return to the issue of emergency aid as part of the effort to extend government funding beyond March 14, when it’s set to expire. That was true, he said, even before the wildfires hit Los Angeles.

“Even the disasters and the hurricane response there — we knew there may be a second bite of that apple,” he told reporters Thursday. “At the end of the day, we knew that that was going to have to be revisited in the negotiations over government funding.”

Attaching disaster aid to a spending bill, however, may be no easy lift in a Republican conference where conservative deficit hawks have demanded that new spending — even emergency aid — be offset by changes elsewhere in the budget. That means House GOP leaders are likely to face added headaches from those hard-line conservatives, who came out against emergency aid without offsets most recently in December as leaders on both sides negotiated the roughly $100 billion disaster package. 

The debate arrives even as the fires surrounding the area continue to burn into the weekend, fueled by relentless winds that have stymied the efforts of firefighters to get them under control. At least 10 people have been killed. More than 10,000 structures have been destroyed. And while initial estimates have varied, multiple projections value losses from the blazes at more than $50 billion.

The most recent projection from AccuWeather estimates between $135 billion and $150 billion in total damage and economic loss, or roughly three times the preliminary estimate released by the weather forecasting company earlier this week. The company added that the estimate could be “revised upward, perhaps even substantially,” as the damage is assessed.

Not all of the emergency response will fall to Washington, D.C. State-level aid programs and private insurers will also pick up much of the tab, although the state was already facing an insurance crunch after a series of wildfires in 2017 and 2018, which caused a crisis of access and affordability for homeowners. 

Scalise put that crisis at the feet of California officials, accusing them of adopting policies that have made it tougher for homeowners to buy fire insurance in the Golden State — a problem he’s urging state leaders to address in the aftermath of the current wildfire tragedy. 

“They did some very specific things in California that forced — it sounded good at the time — but it caused the companies to flee the state,” Scalise said. “Those were horrible policy decisions. And the people that made those policy decisions have to be held accountable.”

A FEMA spokesperson told The Hill the agency has sufficient funding to meet California’s needs and respond to previous disasters. As of Friday, about $27 billion remains in its disaster relief fund.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell has also been in contact with Newsom as response efforts continue. The agency said its regional office in California also has been in close communication with state officials, and a FEMA liaison was deployed to their office earlier this week.