After Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017, then-President Donald Trump made clear that he did not think the island should receive much disaster relief.
He lobbied Republicans against an aid bill, arguing Puerto Rico was getting too much money compared to Texas and Florida. He claimed without evidence that its government was trying to misuse the recovery money to pay down debt. When funding was approved, White House officials stalled sending it, imposed new restrictions and then obstructed an investigation into the delay.
Now, with parts of Los Angeles County still in flames, Trump and his allies are indicating that they would like to run the same playbook.
The problem with attaching strings to disaster relief isn’t just that it’s heartless, but also that you’re likely to attach the wrong strings.
The problems began even before the fires, as Trump threatened to add conditions to future aid during a rally last fall in Coachella, Calif., saying, “We’re not giving you any of that fire money that we send you all the time” unless the state agreed to changes in water policy.
It resurfaced last week as Ohio Rep. Warren Davidson blamed California’s forest management practices for the wildfires, telling Fox Business that Congress should withhold disaster relief until the state changes its policies. “If they want the money, then there should be consequences,” he said.
Since then, the idea has taken off on Capitol Hill. Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, a Trump ally who serves in Senate leadership, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that California shouldn’t be given a “blank check.” Sen. Tommy Tuberville told Newsmax that Californians “don’t deserve anything … unless they show us they’re gonna make some changes.” Rep. Claudia Tenney told Fox Business that Congress should “absolutely” insist on changes to get disaster relief. And Speaker Mike Johnson agreed that there “should probably be conditions” on the aid.
That is not how disaster relief typically works. Typically, Congress appropriates money to the Federal Emergency Management Agency in its annual budget which goes to your run-of-the-mill disasters. When an unexpectedly severe disaster such as the Los Angeles wildfires strikes or the budget is running low, lawmakers pass a supplemental aid bill which covers the cost of helping the people affected.
That’s not to say the federal government doesn’t try to push states to change their policies. It’s just that the strings are usually attached to other grants or forward-looking planning efforts, not by withholding money from families struggling in the wake of a disaster.
There are two problematic trends at play here. One is the increasing use of hostage-taking by congressional Republicans on routine government matters, as you can see every time a debt-ceiling increase becomes an opportunity to push Democrats for concessions. The other is the tendency by Trump and his allies to view the role of government as helping his allies and hurting his opponents.
To be clear, California is not blameless. The state’s limits on insurance rates have made building in dangerous areas attractive, restrictive zoning has pushed growth closer to the wilderness and the county has not updated its firefighting infrastructure. And we all bear some responsibility for the greenhouse gas emissions that are making wildfires more frequent and more severe. An effort to work with the state and the county to figure out how to address those problems would be welcome, if it were in good faith.
But the problem with attaching strings to disaster relief isn’t just that it’s heartless, but also that you’re likely to attach the wrong strings. That’s compounded in this case by the fact that these particular politicians do not want to cite the most obvious cause. Trump regularly voices doubts about climate change, Davidson once claimed ISIS was more of a danger than climate change and Barrasso has spent years blocking climate change bills that might hurt his oil-rich home state. So it’s to be expected that they are going to blame the problems fighting wildfires on completely unrelated water issues hundreds of miles away, not clearing away enough brush or other unspecified “policies of the liberal administration out there.” In the long run, it would be better for Congress to avoid this entire problem by fixing how it allocates disaster relief money in the first place. Under the current system, lawmakers find it easier to underestimate how much aid will be needed when writing the budget and then come back later and appropriate it on an emergency basis. The assumption has long been that it’s easier to get that money approved after a disaster than to plan ahead. But if emergency disaster spending is going to be up to the whims of the president, lawmakers from both parties should make sure that FEMA has what it needs before things gets to that point.
Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for MS NOW. He has previously worked for such outlets as Time magazine and Bloomberg News. He teaches journalism at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies and is the creator of Your First Byline. 
