A congressional authorization without money is a peculiar building material. You cannot use it for a roof, although Washington keeps testing whether people will live under the promise.

The Guardian reports that survivors of disasters after Hurricane Milton in October 2024 still have not received money from HUD’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program. That is long-term rebuilding assistance, separate from FEMA’s emergency aid. Officials estimate that Los Angeles County and St. Louis alone need more than $10 billion.

Congress authorized the program for three years in July. It did not provide additional funding. The federal government has therefore established that rebuilding is officially a good idea. Congratulations to everyone currently living in the gap between an idea and a wall.

I want disaster recovery funded before survivors have to become experts in the difference between authorization and appropriation. Nobody should lose a house and discover that the replacement requires a minor in legislative procedure.

The program has no standing pot of money; Congress supplies it disaster by disaster. There is a certain logic to waiting until you know what happened. There is considerably less logic to continuing to wait after everyone has supplied photographs of what happened, estimates of what happened, and multiple personal appearances explaining that what happened is still happening to them.

Los Angeles survivors have made three trips to Washington to press their case. Twenty-one months after the fires, they are still seeking this rebuilding assistance. A person trying to reconstruct a life should not also have to reconstruct the lobbying operation of a small defense contractor.

The disaster already made its case. It removed the house.

And please don’t confuse my complaint with a demand to throw federal cash from a helicopter. Check claims. Audit spending. Make sure the money reaches people entitled to it. But an unfunded program is not a particularly sophisticated anti-fraud system. It prevents fraudulent rebuilding by preventing rebuilding assistance. A locked hospital also enjoys very low rates of unnecessary surgery.

This is the practical consequence of treating disasters as interruptions to politics rather than a permanent responsibility of government. We have already watched politicians struggle to say the word climate. Apparently saying the amount required afterward is difficult too.

Congress can establish dependable funding and still scrutinize how it is spent. Those abilities are not mutually exclusive. Legislators routinely manage to announce their achievements and ask for campaign money in the same afternoon; I believe in their capacity to handle two related tasks.

Survivors need a recovery program that functions when recovery is needed, not when enough people can afford another trip to the capital.

If authorization without funding counts as helping, perhaps members of Congress would accept an authorized salary.

The money can come after their third visit.