Milton raises stakes for Congress to pass more disaster aid

By Andres Picon | 10/07/2024 01:21 PM EDT

The growing hurricane will hit Florida with lawmakers away from Washington until next month.

Pinellas County residents fill sandbags in preparation for Hurricane Milton.

Pinellas County residents fill sandbags at John Chestnut Park in Palm Harbor, Florida, on Oct. 6, in preparation for Hurricane Milton. Bryan Smith/AFP via Getty Images

The Category 5 hurricane barreling toward Florida will put new pressure on Congress to reconvene to refill dwindling disaster relief accounts.

Less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene slammed into Florida and ravaged communities across the Southeast, a new storm — Hurricane Milton — is threatening to finish off a brutal one-two punch that will further strain the federal government’s disaster coffers.

Hurricane Milton “is not happening in a vacuum. There are five other states that have emergencies going on from Hurricane Helene,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat who served as the state’s director of emergency management from 2019 to 2021, said Monday on CNN.

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“There’s absolutely going to be a resource issue,” he said.

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