On video: Leahy, Sanders, Welch decry FEMA “offsets,” vote for Senate spending bill

The brinksmanship is over – for now.

The Senate voted last night to pass a spending deal that will avert a government shutdown on Friday over disaster aid money, according to a New York Times report on Monday night.

FEMA was set to run out of money at midnight Friday, Sept. 30, when the federal government’s fiscal year 2011 comes to a close. On Monday, the agency said it had enough funding to continue operating through the deadline. This announcement greased the wheels for a bipartisan agreement that lowers the amount of disaster aid in the fiscal year 2011 budget and removes the House language that required “offsets,” or tit-for-tat budget cuts in other areas.

The senators approved the House plan by an overwhelming majority in a 79-12 vote. Representatives most pass the final version of the legislation this week, the New York Times reports.

In a statement, Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said: “While much remains to be done to rebuild Vermont, the Senate found a solution that keeps emergency disaster assistance flowing to Vermont and other states. We fought to ensure that the agreement maintains disaster funding without forcing cuts in other needed programs. We will continue to work with Congressman Welch and Governor Shumlin to make certain that Vermonters get all the help they need and deserve.”

The Republican majority in the House, led by Tea Party partisans, has insisted on cuts to spending in exchange for increases in FEMA funding.

House Republicans had tied increases in Federal Emergency Management Agency funding to budget “offsets,” or reductions in spending for loan programs for automobile fuel efficiency and alternative energy research.

Vermont’s congressional delegation has adamantly opposed the use of emergency aid as a bargaining chip in the battle over the nation’s spending priorities as the Great Recession drags on into a fourth year. All three members, Leahy, Sanders and Congressman Peter Welch, have sounded the same refrain: Disaster aid shouldn’t be up for debate — particularly when the nation continues to spend billions of dollars on rebuilding Afghanistan.

At a press conference at Burlington International Airport on Monday before he and Sanders returned to Washington for a vote on the continuing resolution, Leahy told reporters that he and his wife, Marcelle, had visited flood victims in Vermont.

“I keep getting asked the same question, why the holdup on disaster aid for America?” Leahy said. “It’s never happened before. I tell them there are some, mostly the tea party people who say we can’t give the money unless we take it out of other things like education and health research. I’d like to point out that most people who voted for that voted for a blank check for Iraq … and they voted for a blank check to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild Afghanistan.”

Sanders said hundreds of people around the country responded when Joplin, Mo., was hit by a tornado, “because we are a nation and that is what a nation is about.”

“The last I heard, this country is called the United States of America,” Sander said. “U-N-I-T-E-D. And what that means is that when there is a disaster in Louisiana, the people in Vermont have said we have to do everything we can to help those people.”

Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., railed against the cuts-for-aid proposal, but in the end, voted last week for the measure in order to get a bill to the Senate as soon as possible. As he put it,”I don’t get to design the bill, I have to support highest number we can get, as soon as possible.”

In an interview, Welch characterized the “offset” premise for FEMA funding as a “bad precedent,” because an emergency should fall “under a separate category — it’s not discretionary.”

“Our responsibility in Vermont is to support our tax dollars going to folks hammered by Katrina and the tornado in Joplin, Mo.,” Welch said. “No Vermonter ever complained about that. We find ourselves caught in this offset debate and we shouldn’t be.”

While the debate over FEMA funding appears to be over for the short term (at least until Nov. 18, when the next budget battle — this time for fiscal year 2012 ensues), just how much the federal government will contribute in the form of public assistance for transportation infrastructure remains, however, an open question, and time is running out before the snow flies in November — and asphalt plants close in Vermont.

Tropical Storm Irene caused roughly $1 billion in damage to homes, businesses, roads and public infrastructure in Vermont. FEMA provides individual assistance for homeowners, renters and business owners and public assistance for local roads and municipal infrastructure. Congressional wrangling put that funding in doubt. Nearly a month after the 24-hour storm dumped 11 inches on some portions of the state and floodwaters devastated about 40 towns in the central Vermont region, estimates continue to rise as FEMA and state officials assess the damage. The Vermont Agency of Transportation has estimated that floodwaters that savaged the state’s roads will cost $700 million to rebuild – not including the local transportation infrastructure that was gutted in the storm’s wake.

Leahy has asked the U.S. Department of Transportation to waive a $100 million cap on 100 percent reimbursement for state highways.

If the state can’t obtain the waiver, and instead must pay 90 percent of the cost to fix roads and bridges, Vermont will have to find the $120 million difference, according to Jeb Spaulding, secretary of the Agency of Administration, over the course of the next four to five years as the state rebuilds.

Congress is slated to vote on a transportation bill in the next few weeks.