Republican Leaders Push for Conditions on Disaster Relief for California Wildfire Victims

Republican congressional leaders are touting the idea of placing conditions on the billions of dollars in federal aid for California’s wildfire victims, a strategy they say will force state officials to address alleged resource mismanagement and poor policymaking.

At a Monday press conference, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) criticized state and local officials for exacerbating conditions in California through “unwise” governance, something he said should be addressed before aid is distributed.

“We’re all Americans, and the Americans there that are affected desperately need and deserve help,” Johnson told reporters. “But you’ve also heard us talk about our concerns with the governance of the state of California — state and local — and to the extent that there is complicity involved in the scope of the disaster, then we think that’s something that needs to be carefully regarded.”

In Los Angeles County, deadly wildfires have burned more than 12,000 structures and forced over 100,000 people to evacuate. The suggestion that Congress should place conditions on relief aid needed by thousands of Californians provoked a mixed response from state leaders.

Bill Jackson, who leads the San Francisco Republican Party, said it would be appropriate to put stipulations on federal assistance. He agreed with Johnson’s reasoning.

“I don’t think it’s a left-wing or right-wing thing. It’s a pragmatic thing,” Jackson said. “We should not use our federal government as a piggy bank to bail out residents or cities that build extremely fire-prone areas, especially when they haven’t done enough mitigation to prevent a disaster like this.”

He added that while it would be impossible to completely prevent natural disasters from occurring, things can be done to reduce the impact of wildfires in cities such as Los Angeles. Californians, Jackson claimed, should consider how much risk is associated with building in certain areas and what measures can be taken to make sure a neighborhood is more resilient to wildfire.

Although he disagrees with tying relief considerations to political issues like the country’s debt ceiling, which Johnson and other Republican politicians have suggested, Jackson said state officials should feel the pressure to be fiscally responsible when it comes to recovering from the fires.

“The rules and policies have to change to force the state and localities to make shifts that dramatically reduce the chances that people are going to come back to the federal government for a large bailout in the future,” Jackson said.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Los Angeles), whose district faced evacuation orders last week, called Johnson’s stance “outrageous.”

Conditions such as low humidity, prolonged drought and strong winds contributed to the spread of the Los Angeles fires and, Lieu added, were outside of anyone’s control.

Lieu said the first concern of any representative right now should be figuring out how to help the impacted communities. Efforts to politicize the crisis or to spread disinformation should be met with resistance, Lieu told KQED.

“There is no human being or system that could have prevented most of this destruction,” Lieu said. “I am very distressed and upset that the Speaker of the House and other members of the Republican Caucus have politicized what is a tragedy. We should be focused on helping our fellow Americans.”