Lawmakers Force Vote on Disaster Tax Relief Bill

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington on May 16, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

The House will be forced to vote on a bill that would give federal tax relief to victims of natural disasters due to a mechanism that has rarely succeeded.

The vote will force a vote on the Federal Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2023, which would also provide federal tax relief to those impacted by the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, in February last year.

A discharge petition must have 218 signatures to force a vote on the House floor. The date of the vote on the bill is to be determined.

The petition, put forth on April 30 by Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.), who is also a sponsor of the bill, has 218 signatures, with all but 26 coming from Democrats.

The last time a discharge petition was successful was in 2015, when the Export-Import Bank was reauthorized. The legislation went on to become law.

In a statement, Mr. Steube noted the rarity of the success of discharge petitions, remarking that getting the needed signatures is “a testament to how important this issue is for ALL of our constituents.

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“Floridians have waited since 2022 to receive tax relief from Hurricane Ian, and many other Americans have waited just as long for relief from other disasters.”

Mr. Steube’s measure is in a tax relief bill that passed the House earlier this year but is in limbo in the Senate.

In January, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced regulations to try to streamline the process of receiving assistance from Washington after natural disasters.

Under previous rules, homeowners who had received payments for home repairs from their insurance company, but not enough to cover all of the damage, were essentially out of luck when it came to getting help from FEMA. Now those homeowners can apply to FEMA for help.

Previously, FEMA couldn’t help them because their insurance payout already exceeded the agency’s assistance cap of $42,500 per disaster. Now, that homeowner can get money from the agency to make up the difference.

Additionally, disaster survivors first had to apply for a loan—and be rejected—by the Small Business Administration before they could apply for FEMA assistance.

The agency has had something called critical needs assistance, currently $750, that survivors can use for whatever they need immediately following a disaster—baby formula or food, for example. However, states or tribal nations had to specifically request that category of assistance, which was done only on a case-by-case basis.

Now, anytime a disaster is declared that includes FEMA’s individual assistance funding stream, those $750 payments will be available. Survivors still have to apply, and there is some vetting to prevent fraud, but it bypasses the application that states and tribal nations previously were required to make. That doesn’t mean that every disaster will include these payments. Many declared disasters are more limited in scope.

Disaster survivors with disabilities can use FEMA money to make changes to their homes to make them more accessible, whereas, under previous rules, the agency would only pay to rebuild things that had been damaged in the disaster.

And FEMA is creating a new category of aid called displacement assistance, designed to help those who can’t return to their home. It gives them money for housing while they’re looking for a long-term rental and has flexibility so that they can, for example, use that money to help pay a friend’s utilities if they’re crashing on a couch.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.