By Patrick Howley
The Joe Biden and Kamala Harris White House attempted to rob hundreds of millions of dollars from its Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Disaster Loan Program and transfer the money to accounts intended to pay the salaries of administration officials, according to White House documents. Biden-Harris used COVID-19 as an excuse to try to re-direct the funds. Now, Joe Biden says the Disaster Loan Program has run out of money, leaving suffering Americans in a crisis after Hurricanes Helene and Milton devastated the lives of countless American families. Joe Biden wants Congress to give SBA more money when it returns to session in November. But who will monitor how the Biden-Harris regime uses the money?
“The Small Business Administration’s disaster loan program, which is a critical lifeline to small businesses, homeowners, and renters affected by disasters, has been exhausted,” Democrat Joe Biden stated, encouraging Congress to allocate more money for the program (the Biden White House reportedly wants $1.6 billion for it). Even before Hurricane Milton struck Florida, the SBA apparently had fewer than 50 million dollars to lend to people.
Joe Biden’s fiscal year 2024 budget request, chronicled on a White House budget document, shows how the Biden-Harris White House tried to transfer disaster loan money to pay for staffer salaries. Joe Biden put forth the budget request in March 2023 but Biden’s budget never fully passed and SBA has been operating on a series of continuing resolutions.
The Biden-Harris White House tried to rob $227 million from “Disaster Loans Program balances” to spend it on supposed “COVID-19 program administrative needs.” And guess what? The Biden-Harris White House tried to spend up to $213 million of that disaster loan money for “Salaries and Expenses.”
“The Budget requests the ability to transfer up to $227 million from Disaster Loans Program balances for FY 2024 COVID-19 program administrative needs. Of this amount, up to $213 million will be transferred to the Salaries and Expenses account for necessary expenses in administering SBA’s COVID-19 loan and grant programs and up to $14 million will be transferred to the Office of the Inspector General for conducting audits, investigations, and other oversight on SBA’s COVID-19 loan and grant programs,” the White House document states.
The Biden-Harris White House tried to take $850 million in disaster loan money and “transferred to” and “merged” it with an account for “Salaries and Expenses.”
“For an additional amount for “Disaster Loans Program Account” for the cost of direct loans authorized by section 7(b) of the Small Business Act, $858,000,000, to remain available until expended, of which $8,000,000 shall be transferred to and merged with “Office of Inspector General” for audits and reviews of disaster loans and the disaster loans programs; and of which $850,000,000 may be transferred to and merged with “Salaries and Expenses” for administrative expenses to carry out the disaster loan program or any disaster loan authorized by section 7(b) of the Small Business Act.] (Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2023.)”
The Biden-Harris White House also tried to take at least another $165 million in disaster relief money on “administrative costs” and merged the money with an account for “Salaries and Expenses.”
“For administrative expenses to carry out the direct loan program authorized by section 7(b) of the Small Business Act, [$179,000,000] $175,000,000, to be available until expended, of which $1,600,000 is for the Office of Inspector General of the Small Business Administration for audits and reviews of disaster loans and the disaster loan programs and shall be transferred to and merged with the appropriations for the Office of Inspector General; of which [$169,000,000] $165,000,000 is for direct administrative expenses of loan making and servicing to carry out the direct loan program, which may be transferred to and merged with the appropriations for Salaries and Expenses; and of which $8,400,000 is for indirect administrative expenses for the direct loan program, which may be transferred to and merged with the appropriations for Salaries and Expenses…”
The Biden-Harris White House also tried to transfer disaster relief money to an account dedicated to running the SBA’s office, to an account dedicated to running the SBA’s inspector general’s office, and to a fund dedicated to auditing and overseeing “COVID-19 loan and grant programs.”
Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris administration destroyed the lives of hurricane victims with their disastrous handling of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The Biden-Harris administration is squarely to blame.
As I reported: The Biden-Harris administration’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) spent hundreds of millions of dollars feeding and sheltering illegal immigrants before Hurricane Helene while they ignored an inspector general report warning them that their Disaster Relief Fund had a multi-billion dollar deficit due to misplaced funds. Government records show that FEMA gave lavish amounts of money to Catholic Charities, which specializes in carrying out the demographic replacement of Americans by illegal immigrants.
FEMA’s “Shelter and Services Program” had more than half a billion dollars to throw around this fiscal year. Meanwhile, suffering Americans see their homes and lives devastated in the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
FEMA describes the program thusly: “In Fiscal Year 2024, Congress appropriated $650,000,000 for SSP. SSP provides financial support to non-federal entities to provide sheltering and related activities to noncitizen migrants following their release from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The intent is to support CBP in the safe, orderly, and humane release of non-citizen migrants from short-term holding facilities.”
Various cities and counties and numerous Catholic Charities chapters received funding for migrant “shelter and services” during fiscal year 2024, which ended on September 30. “Catholic Charities Archdiocese of San Antonio, Inc.” got an allocation from FEMA for $10.877226 million, while “Catholic Charities, Diocese of San Diego” got a $19.592554 million handout. Other recipients include the Salvation Army and chapters of the United Way.
FEMA’s fiscal year 2023 Budget Overview states: “The FY 2023 Budget includes an increase of $24.0M to provide emergency food and shelter support to noncitizens released from DHS custody after crossing the southern border…The EFSP provides critical resources to communities providing humanitarian relief to thousands of families and individuals encountered by DHS at our nations southern border. Communities in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, and as far reaching as Portland, Maine, are providing food, shelter, transportation, COVID-19 testing, and care associated with recommended quarantining and isolation of this population and incurring the cost of this relief…Since 2019, services to migrants provided by NGOs and local jurisdictions have significantly increased and in many cases quadrupled. The environment created by the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the cost for humanitarian operations across the entire border. The use of hotels or non-congregate space remains as a prevalent solution and will remain for the foreseeable future, even if COVID-19 concerns decrease. Other shifts in expenditures include the dominant use of vendor supplied meals (vs. prepared in-house), increases in casework needs, medical costs and the availability and cost of transportation (both local and long distance). An additional factor that is contributing to higher operating costs is the shortage of available staff, so increases in wages to secure staff is occurring across the border. In addition, as migrant numbers increase, there is also a rise in agencies outside of the immediate border, in localities such as Los Angeles, Dallas, Austin, New York City, and Portland, ME that are beginning to provide humanitarian services to migrants, before they reach a sponsor. The additional jurisdictions also require an increased availability of EFSP funds for humanitarian relief.”
FEMA’s fiscal year 2023 Budget Overview states: “The Emergency Food and Shelter (EFS) grant provides funding to nonprofit and governmental organizations at the local level to supplement programs aimed at meeting the needs of hungry and homeless people across the Nation. Funding for this program is distributed by the National Board, which is chaired by FEMA and consists of designees from six charitable organizations: American Red Cross; Catholic Charities USA; The Jewish Federations of North America; National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA; The Salvation Army; and United Way Worldwide…”
A local news station in Wisconsin profiled FEMA and Catholic Charities’ collaboration on housing illegal migrant children all the way back in 2014:
FEMA found the time to produce this very cringe-worthy video on “Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility in Exercises” in 2023, demonstrating the incompetent agency’s fatuous progressive priorities:
Kamala is getting rightly ratioed for trying to offer hurricane victims a $750 payment while her regime spends many billions on foreign wars including in Ukraine.
The establishment is trying to push the narrative that the Shelter and Services Program is a different pool of money than the Disaster Relief Fund, and therefore we should not compare the spending behavior of the two different programs. But that’s nonsense. The Biden-Harris administration KNEW about a multi-billion dollar deficit for its Disaster Relief program BEFORE Hurricane Helene hit, courtesy of a warning from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general. But the Biden-Harris regime was too busy spending FEMA money on illegal immigrants to bother fixing its disaster relief fund, even though they COULD HAVE gotten the missing money back in time to help Hurricane Helene and Milton victims.
As I reported: The Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration received an inspector general report prior to Hurricane Helene warning them that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) lost billions of dollars due to bureaucratic mismanagement, leaving the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) in a massive deficit. But the Biden-Harris regime refused to turn the beleaguered agency around, setting up the catastrophe that is playing out in America due to Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
“FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season,” said Alejandro Mayorkas, the head of Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees FEMA, amid a deadly hurricane season that Americans will never be able to forget.
But FEMA head Deanne Criswell was personally addressed a copy of a DHS inspector general report more than a month before Hurricane Helene hit that made it clear FEMA’s own incompetence led to the funding shortage, and that FEMA had a chance to easily get the money back.
The inspector general report said that the billions of dollars in missing money was STILL AVAILABLE to be used by FEMA for disaster relief. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had the chance to save billions of dollars that could have been used for Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton relief efforts. The Joe Biden and Kamala Harris regime knew that FEMA was seriously ill-equipped to help disaster victims.
FEMA placed billions of dollars into projects that they basically lost interest in, and the money has just been sitting around unable to be used for disaster relief because the Biden-Harris administration did not bother to re-allocate the misplaced funds, according to an August 14, 2024 U.S. Department of Homeland Security inspector general report entitled “FEMA’s Inadequate Oversight Led To Delays In Closing Out Declared Disasters.”
“As of July 2023, the DRF was projected to have a $4.3 billion deficit by the end of fiscal year 2023. Continued delays in FEMA closing older disasters put an added strain on the primary source of funding for the Federal Government’s disaster relief program by withholding the return of $7.1 billion in potential monetary benefits, as detailed in Appendix D. Without stronger policies and improved oversight, FEMA risks continuing to close disaster programs in an untimely manner. Doing so prevents taxpayer dollars associated with expired or excessively extended grants from being returned to the DRF,” the inspector general report states (pg. 10).
The inspector general report recommended that FEMA “assess and close, as appropriate, the 42 grant programs in our scope representing $7 billion in unliquidated funding…”
How much of that “unliquidated funding” could have gone to hurricane victims in North Carolina, Florida or the numerous other states ravaged by hurricanes?
Kamala Harris’ poor handling of hurricane response is her biggest negative issue on social media according to ImpactSocial, as reported by Newsweek in an article entitled “Kamala Harris’ Hurricane Response Hurting Her Among Swing Voters: Analysis.”
But FEMA chief Deanne Criswell found the time to amped up about supposed conspiracy theories in a conversation with the press.
“It is absolutely the worst I have ever seen,” Criswell said to the media on a press call, referring to supposed misinformation and not referring to the cataclysmic damage inflicted on American citizens by the Biden regime’s neglect.
“It’s creating distrust in the federal government, but also the state government,” Criswell complained, seemingly oblivious to her own agency’s horrific response.
FEMA has been accused on social media of actually blocking supplies from getting to the hurricane victims in need. Elon Musk said that FEMA blocked the installation of StarLink terminals and other items that his SpaceX team tried to deliver in North Carolina.
Kamala, meanwhile, tried to wiggle her way out of the jam by trying out a new Latina accent, which sounds like Cheech from the classic stoner comedy team “Cheech and Chong.”
