by KAREN TOWNSEND
Governor Greg Abbott requested statewide designation for major disaster relief from President Biden. Biden denied the statewide designation and only approved some counties in Texas, not all of them. Abbott asked for a declaration that covered the entire state because the winter storm knocked out power and heat throughout the state, as well as leaving millions of Texans without water.
Texas has 254 counties. Biden approved only 77 counties for disaster relief. The governor calls it an important first step but it falls far short of what Texas officials requested. Biden signed the declaration late Friday. It covers much of the Texas population. The counties covered include the cities of Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin. The assistance can include grants for temporary housing, home repairs, and low-cost loans.
No real reason was given for the snub from the White House or from FEMA. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki mentioned that Biden wants to focus on the hardest hit areas. Now state officials will have to gather data from the counties that were left out.
The White House has left open the possibility of further designations, and state officials said Saturday they will gather data from the counties omitted from the initial declaration to support the state’s request.
“The governor requested a federal disaster declaration, the president asked his team to expedite that and FEMA determined where the counties should be, where it should focus the immediate resources, where the counties that are hardest hit, so that they can make sure they get the people in most need,” Psaki said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Governor Abbott expressed gratitude for what was given.
“I thank President Biden for his assistance as we respond to impacts of winter weather across our state,” Abbott said in a statement Saturday. “Texas will continue to work with our federal partners to ensure all eligible Texans have access to the relief they need. The funds provided under the Major Disaster Declaration may provide crucial assistance to Texans as they begin to repair their homes and address property damage.”
Additional designations “may be made at a later date if requested by the state and warranted by the results of further damage assessments,” the White House said. Texas Division Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd wants all 254 counties to document damages. County by county, dollar by dollar, Kidd is confident that all counties in Texas will meet the government’s threshold.
.@GovAbbott and @TDEM are encouraging Texans to complete a damage survey to help us identify damages across TX from #winterstorm2021.
This data is needed to provide information to @FEMA and highlight the need for federal assistance for individuals.https://t.co/5OToFAX4W3 pic.twitter.com/q7va1A0qGd
— Texas Division of Emergency Management (@TDEM) February 20, 2021
The congresswoman who represents my district (a Democrat) joined with 13 other Democrats in Congress to urge FEMA to approve a statewide request. Senators Cornyn and Cruz also wrote a letter in support of federal aid.
“This is an important first step to getting the resources necessary to help our state recover and rebuild,” said Rep. Lizzie Fletcher of Houston, one of 13 Texas Democrats in Congress who jointly urged FEMA to approve the state’s request.
“Although we expect the extreme winter temperatures to wane, the long-term damage to our homes, businesses, municipal services and infrastructure, energy infrastructure, and agricultural and food systems cannot be overstated. Much of this damage will be exacerbated by a simultaneous economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that has already challenged local industries and governments,” they wrote Thursday.
Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz wrote Biden on Friday urging approval of the governor’s request for aid “for all 254 Texas counties as a result of severe winter weather that began on February 11, 2021. We urge you to grant this request to secure the health and safety of all Texans affected by this disaster.”
What happened to Biden’s pledge to get Texans whatever we need? He posted a photo op of himself as he allegedly spoke to Governor Abbott as the storm was hitting the state.
Tonight, I called Governor Greg Abbott to discuss the ongoing situation in Texas and identify ways we can support the state’s recovery from this storm. I made clear to the Governor that I’ll work relentlessly to get his state what they need. pic.twitter.com/UBwH8DMep2
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 19, 2021
If the idea is to project some newly found desire to be fiscally responsible with federal dollars and only serve the large areas of the state (mostly Democrat areas), that would be ironic, given Biden is working hard to ram through a $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill that is loaded up with all kinds of goodies that have nothing to do with the pandemic and everything to do with Democrat pork.
I wonder what this stupid, lying idiot thinks we should have done to prevent water mains from freezing and rupturing?
When the idiot Biden approves aid to Dallas, Bexar and Harris counties, what the hell does he think happened in between? What an absolutely stupid moron. Just as their hypocritically-named “Recovery” bill, all he is doing is rewarding those stupid enough to support his corrupt ass.
Maybe the idiot Biden is afraid to come down here; some cars might drive on the same highway as his motorcade. Scary stuff. Stay home, you dumbass. Texas doesn’t want you down here. If you want to do something in Texas, go to the border and finish the wall. Stop flooding our state with illegal immigrants.
@Deplorable Me: Just remember, if Jill comes with him, make note of her shoes.
The degree to which individual Texas counties were affected varied greatly. The interactive map 1/3 or the way down this page indicates what percentage of customers in each county were without electrical power. A few Texas counties near the state’s borders aren’t dependent on the Texas grid and suffered no outages at all. Numerous other counties had outages affecting well under 20 percent or even 10 percent of their customers. Others were pretty much left entirely in the dark.
Why wouldn’t you expect for federal disaster assistance dollars be directed according?
Maybe Biden remembers the thanks Obama got from Gov. Rick Perry after directing over $17 billion in federal stimulus aid to the state following the 2008 economic disaster.
@kitt: And pants and jacket and hat and anything else, and attack it mercilessly. Got it. We learned the proper etiquette.
@Greg: And the idiot Biden has already assessed how each individual county was affected? The ENTIRE STATE was snowbound. There was snow on Galveston beach! Stop testing your bullshit on us.
@Greg: Does the power on stop waterlines from freezing? It doesnt here, sometimes the water companies have water drizzel orders and our lines are below the frost line, damn you are dumb.
@Deplorable Me:
Maybe you folks should stop shoveling the bullshit. You put an idiot in the White House. Biden is his replacement. The man is no idiot. None of the messes he’s having to deal with are his own doing.
One day Texas right-wingers are talking succession. The next they’re attacking Biden because he’s not handing over a blank check quickly enough without an assessment of what is actually needed the most, and where.
@Greg: The messes?
Ended affordable insulin
Ended Apprenticeship programs
Ended deporting sexual predators
Restarted catch and release
Allowing Chinese into the grid structure
Killed union jobs.
Is using all the structure of operation warp speed
only 9% of his stimulus is covid related
STFU power does not stop watermains from freezing you are as ignorant as the boob Biden.
@Greg:
You seem to be under the impression that you know more than we Texans know. That would be your form of bullshit, which you peddle here day after day. And quoting the Trib is just another example of how you resort to left leaning sources.
Judas Priest, Comrade Greggie. Your guy can’t even give a two minute speech without messing it up. Why is he spending his weekends playing Mario Kart while the VP is conferencing with foreign heads of state that has never been done before? Perhaps because those (really) in charge know that Beijing Biden is dangerous because he suffers from dementia.
He can stay out of Texas as far as I’m concerned.
@Greg:
Nah, we’re too busy talking about how Beijing Biden’s putting unaccompanied alien children back into the cages he and Obummer built.
@retire05:
So you people claim, again and again and again. What you’re doing is falsely equating a proneness to verbal fumbles with having nothing to communicate that makes sense. That’s about as superficial as thinking gets. Your problem is that you can’t listen.
After four year of president who seldom put three consecutive sentences together into a coherent paragraph without digressing into personal attacks, shallow political memes, crowd stroking, and self-congratulatory blather, we’ve got a man who actually communicates on an adult level. He tells people what they need to know and understand, not what he calculates they want to hear. He doesn’t lie every time he opens his mouth.
This is a HUGE improvement, in my opinion. I’m sure a large majority of Americans feel the same.
You folks can’t even post a picture of Biden without deceptive photo manipulation. You’ve made yourselves crazy. You no longer know what’s real.
@Greg:
If we stopped shoveling it away, YOU LEFTISTS would cover us up in it.
Biden is no idiot? Then he is a LIAR. Right? Will ban fracking… will NOT ban fracking? Trump said Nazis were “fine people”? No vaccine when he took office? No one lost their doctor or insurance because of Obamacare? Either HE is an idiot or he believes YOU are an idiot.
Trump was highly successful. He was on his way to fulfilling EVERY campaign promise. The idiot Biden is simply a lying moron that doesn’t have to worry about what lies he tells because the Demediacrats, knowing he is a hopeless idiot, simply lets him go at it. We had what was proving to be a possibly GREAT President… a true LEADER. Through fraud, we got a president*, controlled by everyone around him and forces overseas, that has already proven an embarrassing failure.
Hey, the idiot BIDEN said he was going to render aid. So, DO IT then. Or, is he an idiot? Or, was he lying?
Is that why between him, Fauci and Psaki, NO ONE knows what they intend with COVID, opening schools or forcing more illegal immigrants on the country. He communicates on a third grade level. And, actually, yes, he DOES lie every time he opens his mouth. EVERY time. He’s an idiot.
We already know the value of your opinion. You voted for this complete idiot, you voted for the confirmed corrupt criminal Hillary and you denigrated every accomplishment of Trumps simply because he accomplished it.
@Deplorable Me:
Go easy on Comrade Greggie. He is so gullible he believes every word that comes from Beijing Biden’s mouth. Of course, Biden had to drop out of one POTUS race because he plagiarize someone else, lied about his education, lied about the poor man that was involved in the auto accident that killed his first wife, lied about the position his oldest son, Beau, held in government, lied about his side line dealings with China, lied about being endorsed (every time) by the NAACP, lied about being arrested when trying to visit Mandela, lied about being against the was in Iraq from the beginning, the list goes on.
But according to Comrade Greggie, ever word coming from Beijing Biden’s mouth is golden truth.
Meanwhile, 11,000 union Keystone workers know Beijing Biden’s full of crap.
@Greg:
A large majority, minus dead people, duplicate people, non-existent people, and those paid in beers or gift cards for their voice and you have a small minority propping up the biggest joke that has ever been allowed in the WH.
Biden can’t string three sentences together, but like his bribing of Ukraine, you pretend to accuse Trump of that?
Moron.
No, an unelected Dictator is not an improvement, especially one who’s not even at his desk.
Hehe. That’s you and your minority usurpers, Zhang.
Biden is a joke, world-wide, and we’ve lost all respect on the global stage.
Fact.
@retire05: It’s just a fact that liberals like Greg LIKE lies.