While FEMA is expected to ask Congress for new money, budget experts note a surprising fact: FEMA is currently sitting on untapped reserves appropriated for past disasters stretching back decades.

An August report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General noted that in 2022, FEMA “estimated that 847 disaster declarations with approximately $73 billion in unliquidated funds remained open.”

Drilling down on that data, the OIG found that $8.3 billion of that total was for disasters declared in 2012 or earlier.

Such developments are part of a larger pattern in which FEMA failed to close out specific grant programs “within a certain timeframe, known as the period of performance (POP),” according to the IG report. Those projects now represent billions in unliquidated appropriations that could potentially be returned to the DRF (Disaster Relief Fund).”

These “unliquidated obligations” reflect the complex federal budgeting processes. Safeguards are important so that FEMA funding doesn’t become a slush fund that the agency can spend however it chooses, budget experts said, but the inability to tap unspent appropriations from long-ago crises complicates the agency’s ability to respond to immediate disasters.

‘Age Old-Game’

“This is an age-old game that happens and it doesn’t matter what administration is in,” said Brian Cavanaugh, who served as an appropriations manager at FEMA in the Trump administration. “It’s unfortunate how complex disaster relief has become, but it’s skyrocketing costs.”

Cavanaugh said neither action from Congress nor an executive order from the White House would be required to tap those funds because FEMA is operating on the sort of continuing resolutions Congress routinely authorizes. If the money is part of “immediate needs funding,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas could draw from the billions in untapped money to help the victims of Helene and then inform lawmakers he was compelled to do so, leaving elected officials facing charges they sought to pinch pennies when Americans were desperate.

FEMA did not respond to a request for comment about whether it could access the earmarked funds.

Mayorkas, whose Department oversees FEMA, stressed the agency is not broke, and both he and other FEMA officials said this week there was enough money in the Disaster Relief Fund to meet the needs of victims of Hurricane Helene, which with a death count of more than 200 stands as the most lethal storm to hit the U.S. since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Most of Helene’s bills will come due in the future, and Mayorkas said FEMA can meet the day-to-day needs of operations right now in afflicted states but might be hard-pressed if another storm like Helene were to hit this year. Hurricane season officially lasts until the end of November, but historically, September and October have been the months in which the occasional monster smites the U.S.

“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” Mayorkas told a press gaggle Oct. 2 on Air Force One. “We are expecting another hurricane hitting. We do not have the funds. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season and … what is imminent.”

On Oct. 3, FEMA, which handles state and local government relief aid as well as the federal flood insurance plan and individual emergency requests, said it had spent at least $20 million in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida – three of the states that bore the brunt of Helene as it ripped ashore last week. The figures FEMA provided did not include Georgia, another state hard-hit by Helene, which made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26 as a Category 4 hurricane.

Longtime FEMA critics said the looming shortfall is not surprising, given its main job is to use federal taxpayer dollars to reimburse state and local governments for recovery costs, in addition to more immediate money it provides to victims on an individual basis.

“It doesn’t strike me as too weird,” said Chris Edwards, policy scholar at the conservative Cato Institute. “Right now, $20 million is peanuts, but it’s not necessarily unreasonable to think the upcoming bills will be much, much higher.”

Skyrocketing Costs

The skyrocketing costs associated with disaster recovery are one of the main drivers of FEMA’s predicted budget woes. Last year, the U.S. saw a record 28 storms that caused more than $1 billion in damages, and the $1 billion threshold has been reached 19 times thus far in 2024. Since 2001, there have been nine times that FEMA nearly ran out of money in its Disaster Relief Fund, forcing it to pause hundreds of non “life-saving services” the agency runs.

The price tag on some of those services, such as those associated with assistance to immigration, has seen an unprecedented surge due to millions of illegal entrants during Biden’s term. FEMA has spent more than $640 million on those programs in 2024, leading to criticism this week from Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and others.

FEMA rebutted the claims by insisting those sums did not come out of the Disaster Relief Fund. Yet as Cavanaugh, Edwards, and others noted, the relief fund isn’t the main driver of FEMA’s expenses, which are primarily reimbursements to state and local agencies that handle things like debris removal, road and power grid repairs, and the like.

Thus far, FEMA has been getting mixed reviews from elected officials for its response to Hurricane Helene in afflicted states. While five state officials in North Carolina’s hard-hit Buncombe County did not respond to questions from RCI, some Tar Heel residents have complained in media reports about the agency’s invisibility.

While FEMA rarely initiates or administers contracts to clean debris, restore power, or search for survivors, the agency does provide emergency cash to storm victims who apply for it. Flood insurance protection comes not from private homeowners policies but from a federal program run by FEMA.

‘Crazy’ Numbers

Generally, FEMA, along with state or local officials and a neutral third-party civil engineer, will estimate the cost of such work, and then the final figure will come through negotiations. But given those settlements are far in the future, they should not have any bearing on FEMA’s current budget.

“It’s just crazy how expensive the numbers have gotten,” said Jeremy Portnoy of OpenTheBooks, a nonpartisan watchdog of government spending. “They’ve been warning for months now they are running out of money.”

Portnoy first called attention to FEMA’s unspent funds in conversations with RealClearInvestigations on Sept. 8. He said it seems bizarre that federal officials would have a pot substantial enough to cover a projected shortfall while adding billions to the Disaster Relief Fund, but fail to draw on it.

“There is all that money just sitting there,” Portnoy said. “They’re saying they don’t have enough money but when you juxtapose it with the more than $8 billion, well, why not use that right now in Florida and other places?”

The “unliquidated obligations” have stayed on FEMA’s books because it “subjectively” extended the deadlines on some projects. The deadline for 2012’s Superstorm Sandy has been extended to 2026.

“As a result, the potential risk for fraud, waste, and abuse increases the longer a program remains open,” a DHS report concluded.

Although DHS could probably reach into such unliquidated obligations to help restore order in areas devastated by Helene, experts note that bureaucracies are loath to resort to such tactics when budget negotiations are near, as they are when the fiscal year ends this month.

“The bridges that have been washed out, that’s not something FEMA will have to pay tomorrow,” Cavanaugh said.

SpaceX Engineer In North Carolina Has Dire Warning: Biden-Harris' FEMA "Actively Blocking Shipments" For Relief  https://t.co/aydr7R3wrd

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 4, 2024

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas dropped the bombshell last week: FEMA “does not have the funds” to see Americans through the rest of this Atlantic hurricane season. The federal agency drained the funds by prioritizing taxpayer funds for illegal and legal aliens versus US citizens as the Biden-Harris globalist team rolled out the red carpet to anyone, even terrorists, via the open southern borders.

“Connect the dots, if you can,” Tim Murtaugh, an adviser to former President Trump’s campaign, wrote on X, adding, “DHS says FEMA might not have enough cash to help people through hurricane season. But in 2 years of a new Biden-Harris program, they’ve spent $1 BILLION on housing and other services for migrants.”

Connect the dots, if you can.

DHS says FEMA might not have enough cash to help people through hurricane season.

But in 2 years of a new Biden-Harris program, they’ve spent $1 BILLION on housing and other services for migrants.https://t.co/BUCIKT65urhttps://t.co/YMLe1x4yDZ pic.twitter.com/dDGXeKaRnP

— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) October 3, 2024

Shedding a whole heck of a lot of color on the situation, Savanah Hernandez, a reporter for Turning Point USA, wrote on X that she has uncovered some of the “first looks” inside fully furnished luxury apartments for migrants that received free rent and utilities for two years.

Hernandez wrote in a note on The Post Millennial:

The Brunswick Landing apartments in Maine sparked controversy earlier this year when it was discovered that homeless migrants in the area were getting the opportunity to live in the units rent-free for up to two years. Migrants living in the apartments shared that not only is the rent-free, the utilities are paid and we got an inside look at the furnished apartments that would run the average American about $2,300 dollars. –

FIRST LOOK: Inside the furnished Maine apartments where migrants are getting up to 2 years of free rent & utilities

This apartment is in the same county which received $6.1 mill in funding from the FEMA program that spent $1 billion on housing migrants:pic.twitter.com/W0xIr5uMSy

— Savanah Hernandez (@sav_says_) October 4, 2024

“This apartment is in the same county which received $6.1 mill in funding from the FEMA program that spent $1 billion on housing migrants,” Hernandez pointed out on X.

This apartment, located in Cumberland county, is one of many throughout Maine which is allowing migrants to live rent free for up to two years.

In this video, we also went undercover at Catholic charities Maine where they detailed their plan to continue bringing 150 more…

— Savanah Hernandez (@sav_says_) October 4, 2024

She continued:

LEWISTON-I made my way up to Maine to see how the migrant crisis has affected the area and found migrants from Angola, Somalia and the Congo

While migrants enjoy the area, one resident expressed an uptick in shootings, drugs & crime related to migrants: pic.twitter.com/0s3iy4eg1l

— Savanah Hernandez (@sav_says_) October 3, 2024

Biden-Harris administration has prioritized illegal and legal aliens over citizens. The botched relief response in the US Southeast exemplifies this great failure unfolding in a Katrina-like event.

At the top of the list of people who should be all over this is Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security which oversees FEMA. Unfortunately, the American citizens who are in the most dire of circumstances are being put on hold as Mayorkas spends his time buying luxury clothing at Sid Mashburn, a high-end menswear store.

Twitter user Joe Gabriel Simonson noticed Mayorkas there for the second time in a month, this time snapping a photo:

For context about all the FEMA stuff, I saw Alejandro Mayorkas this afternoon at Sid Mashburn, which is the second time I’ve seen him there on a Saturday afternoon in about a month. So, suffice to say, the guy isn’t working around the clock pic.twitter.com/NC5yNzikET

— Joe Gabriel Simonson (@SaysSimonson) October 5, 2024

Elon Musk wasn’t impressed:

He’s shopping for fancy clothes while people are suffering from hurricane damage. This is some Hunger Games shit.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 6, 2024

According to The Gateway Pundit:

The photo, first uploaded to the X platform, caught the attention of Elon Musk, who was less than impressed by Mayorkas’s actions.

“He’s shopping for fancy clothes while people are suffering from hurricane damage,” Musk wrote. “This is some Hunger Games shit.”

Rep. Nancy Mace, who represents a district in the neighboring state of South Carolina and has led efforts to force the federal government to provide additional funding to the hurricane’s victims, suggested that Mayorkas should be impeached again.

Already voted to impeach @SecMayorkas once.

Who thinks we need to do it again?

— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) October 4, 2024

The UniParty Swamp and their subsidiaries in the Bureaucratic State know Americans are suffering. Not only do they not case, but they also don’t care that we know they don’t care.

Hutcherson has an extensive background in federal contracting having worked at forward operating bases (FOBs) in military war zones. Her company built soft-sided structures, water facilities and other necessities for soldiers as part of a multi-billion dollar operating agreement with Washington, D.C.

Because she has access to the federal database of contract bids for all of the government projects going on at any given time, Hutcherson can see specifically and exactly what is going on behind the scenes at any given time.

“There are bids for detention facilities being built in all 50 states in America,” Hutcherson explained to Carrell in the interview, which was also covered by Redacted – watch below:

“I go in the database, J.J, and there are detention facility bids to build individual detention facilities in every state in the union. Who do you think they’re built for? Are they built for all the illegal aliens or unaccompanied alien children? Of course not.”

(Related: Back in early 2022, we warned you that some politicians have been pushing for concentration camps to be built in the United States – well, it looks like that time has arrived.)

Concentration camps in America

Carrell, who considers himself something of an expert on these types of things, says he was shocked at what Hutcherson had to say. He says he fell for the idea that these detention facilities are for illegals and migrants, not Americans.

“Most of these ICE facilities are completely empty,” Carrell explains. “I’ve talked to my buddies in Texas and in San Diego, I’ve talked to my ICE supervisors, and they tell me that they’re empty.”

“So you’re talking anywhere from 30,000 to 40,000 beds across America, mainly on the southern border, are empty. Why are they empty? Because we have massive catch and release.”

Back in the old days when Carrell was more directly involved in border work, he says they did not just catch and release illegal aliens. They would transport the illegals they caught to ICE facilities for processing and eventual deportation.

“They went and they waited there a week, two weeks, a month, whatever it was, to go in front of the judge, fined or deported, deported or found to be guilty of reentering as a felon, then they spent time in federal prison, then they would be deported – so we had all this bed space,” Carrell explains.

“I get someone that’s a reported felon now, I’m releasing them on the street. So you go from arresting people three years ago, setting them up for deportation and prosecution, goes to a camp space in an ICE facility, then the courts and deportation – not now. Everyone gets arrested by the Border Patrol, they quickly “vet” them, then release them.”

Even more disturbing is the fact that there are closer to 30 million, if not more, illegals who have flooded the U.S. just in the past couple years. This is enough to replace the populations of about 36 states, Hutcherson further says.

“Why would they need to continue to [house them in camps] that if they’re trying to absorb, assimilate, etc.? I believe it’s to do like what the Nazis did to the Jews – concentration camps, processing facilities. They’re going to need some place to process the dissidents.”

The worst time in human history is almost here. Learn more at Tyranny.news.

Sources for this article include:

• YouTube.com
• NaturalNews.com