US PRESIDENT JOE Biden is today seeing up close the devastation inflicted on Florida’s Gulf Coast by Hurricane Milton as he presses Congress to approve additional emergency disaster funding.
Vice President Kamala Harris is spending a second day in North Carolina, hard-hit by Hurricane Helene, to worship with Black churchgoers and hold a campaign rally.
Biden arrived in Tampa and flew by helicopter to St Pete Beach, surveying the wreckage left behind by Milton, including the roof of Tropicana Field that was shorn off by the powerful storm’s winds.
Later, as the president’s motorcade drove along the highway, piles of debris, tattered billboards, toppled fences, fallen trees and closed gas stations were seen.
It passed through a neighbourhood where almost every home had water damage and heaps of belongings were on the curb.
The visit gave Biden another chance to press House speaker Mike Johnson for congressional approval of more aid money before the 5 November election.
Johnson said that officials will deal with the issue after the election because of the amount of time it takes to come up with an estimate. He said on CBS’ Face the Nation that his “guesstimate” is that $100 billion (about €91.4 billion) will be needed.
“We’ll provide the additional resources,” Johnson said.
In Florida, Biden was set to announce $612 million (about €559.5 million) for six Department of Energy projects in areas affected by the hurricanes to improve the resilience of the region’s electric grid, the White House said.
Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, visited Raleigh on Saturday to meet with Black elected and religious leaders and help volunteers package personal care items for delivery to victims of Helene in the western part of the state.
She is spending today in Greenville, with plans to speak during a church service as part of her campaign’s Souls to the Polls effort, to help turn out Black churchgoers before Election Day.
If you have been displaced due to the recent hurricanes, you may be eligible for lodging reimbursement from FEMA: https://t.co/RoagxFgc8j pic.twitter.com/Sq1DOyYZgG
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) October 13, 2024
She was also scheduled to hold a rally to talk about her economic plans and highlight Thursday’s start of early voting in the state, her campaign said.
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, will spend the coming week campaigning in the competitive states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina, according to a campaign official.
With less than four weeks to go before election day, the hurricanes have added another dimension to the closely contested presidential race.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said the Biden administration’s storm response had been lacking, particularly in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. Biden and Harris have hammered Trump for promoting falsehoods about the federal response.
Trump made a series of false claims after Helene struck in late September, including incorrectly saying that the federal government is intentionally withholding aid to Republican disaster victims.
He also falsely claimed the Federal Emergency Management Agency had run out of money because all of it had gone to programmes for immigrants in the country illegally.
Biden said Trump was “not singularly” to blame for the spread of false claims in recent weeks but that he has the “biggest mouth”.
The president is pressing for swift action by Congress to make sure the Small Business Administration and Fema have the money they need to get through hurricane season, which ends on 30 November in the Atlantic.
He said that Milton alone had caused an estimated $50 billion (€45.7 billion) in damages.
Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week that Fema will be able to meet “immediate needs” caused by the two storms. But he warned in the aftermath of Helene that the agency does not have enough funding to make it through the hurricane season.
However, Johnson has pushed back, saying the agencies have enough money for the time being and that politicians will address the funding issue during the lame-duck session after the election.
Also percolating in the background are tensions between Harris and Governor Ron DeSantis.
As Helene barrelled toward Florida, the two traded accusations that the other was trying to politicise the federal storm response.
Harris’ office last week suggested that DeSantis was dodging her phone calls. DeSantis responded that he was unaware she had called and he grumbled that she had not been involved in the federal government’s response before she became the Democratic nominee.
Biden said he hoped to see DeSantis today if the governor’s schedule permitted.
“He’s been very co-operative,” Biden said about DeSantis. He added, “We got on very, very well.”
Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday evening. At least 16 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of residents remain without power.
Officials say the toll could have been worse if not for widespread evacuations. The still-fresh devastation wrought by Helene just two weeks earlier probably helped compel many people to flee.
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