Special to the American Press

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, joined North Carolina Rep. Chuck Edwards and Sen. Thom Tillis and Ted Budd in Asheville, N.C.,to meet with first responders and families impacted by Hurricane Helene, which devastated communities in the Southeast last week.

The delegation received multiple on-the-ground tours of the hurricane damage.

“I think it’s important for the Speaker of the House to come,” Johnson said. “It’s symbolic to show that it’s the whole of Congress that has our eyes and our attention, our prayers on the community here and those who are affected. We want them to know they will not be forgotten and that we will get recovery dollars to these communities as is needed.”

“Before we left Congress two Wednesdays ago — we’re on day 13 post-storm here — but the day before Helene made landfall, Congress passed an appropriations, a continuing resolution to fund the government, and we included $20 billion to go to FEMA so that they would have what was necessary for the emergent needs, the urgent needs that followed the hurricane,” he said.

“We supplied FEMA with the resources that it needed to respond directly,” Johnson said. “As of Monday, only 1% of those funds had actually been distributed. There’s concern that the federal response was too slow, and that needs to be addressed. But FEMA and the administration have the resources necessary right now to address the immediate needs.”

“What happens next after a storm like this is that the states then do their individual assessments and calculations of the damages and then they submit that need to the federal government. Then Congress acts. So as soon as those calculations are prepared, Congress will act in a bipartisan fashion to supply what is needed to help these communities recover, the appropriate amount that the federal government should do.”