Hurricane relief shifts political landscape

Hurricane Harvey has "forged a new reality for President Trump and the Republicans governing Washington," writes the New York Times reporter Carl Hulce.  "The storm has utterly transformed the federal fiscal picture."

Impossible now is the "confrontational talk" of a government shutdown over Trump's wall or the brinksmanship over the debt limit.  Shutting down government in a time of such a disaster is unthinkable.

A longtime chief budget adviser to Senate Republicans, G. William Hoagland, says:  "This is going to change the whole dynamic for September and, quite frankly, for the Republican establishment for the remainder of the 115th Congress.”  Instead of money to build a wall on the Texas border, they have to come up with money to rebuild the shoreline in Texas.

Carl Hulce, however, points out that this may provide Mr. Trump and congressional leaders with the "common cause that has proved so elusive after their failure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act."   This is Trump's first big test in dealing with a natural disaster, and he is eager to be seen as a competent manager. 

"At the same time, a huge relief program tacked on to the federal deficit could undermine the claim by the president and his party that they are stewards of a leaner, more efficient federal bureaucracy."

Hulce continues:  "Republicans who had been bracing for a September showdown over how to fund the government are rapidly changing course. While they await potentially staggering damage assessments, they are pledging to do whatever it takes to help those flooded out along the Gulf Coast."

So shutting down the government and building the border wall are likely to be the first to go.  And it will be more difficult for Trump to fulfill his promise of a broad crackdown on illegal immigration.

Beyond fiscal considerations, ending the DACA program, for those brought here as children and have known no other home, would seem especially cruel right now, given that such a large number of those affected live in Texas.

"The debate over migrant labor could also be influenced, because repairing or replacing huge numbers of homes and restoring damaged infrastructure will require thousands of construction workers, who were already in short supply around the country. Immigrant labor, both documented and undocumented, proved critical in the rebuilding effort that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005."

Even more directly related is the House Republicans' planned vote next week on a spending bill that would have taken nearly $875 million away from the FEMA budget.  Instead, they're faced with the necessity of significantly increasing money for disaster planning and relief.

One solution being considered is to pass a stopgap measure to keep the government open and postpone the toughest spending decisions to the next quarter at the end of December.

The one thing that is clear is that Republicans, already struggling to manage ordinary government operations, despite control of the White House and both houses of Congress, has now been given a major challenge that requires shifting both fiscal and political priorities in order to survive.   It makes even more difficult their uphill struggle to prove that they are a party that can unite enough to perform the tasks of governing.

Ralph