At Least One California GOP Congressman Backs Speaker Johnson’s Proposal for Putting Conditions on Fire Aid Funds

AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) made headlines this week when he voiced his support for putting conditions on federal aid for the recovery from the Los Angeles area fires, and at least one of Johnson’s California Republican colleagues is on board.

The wildfires have burned nearly 40,000 acres, forced the evacuations of over a hundred thousand people, and destroyed entire neighborhoods — and concerns remain over persisting high wind and drought conditions. In a press conference Monday morning, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said the current death toll was 21 but “sadly, yes, unfortunately, I anticipate the number to go up.”

On Monday, CNN chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju caught up with Johnson in the Capitol office hallways and chatted with him about aid for the California fire recovery. Johnson said:

We’ve got to have a serious conversation about that. Obviously, there has been water resource mismanagement, forest management mistakes, all sorts of problems. And it does come down to leadership. And it appears to us that state and local leaders were derelict in their duty and in many respects.

So that’s something that has to be factored in. I think there should probably be conditions on that aid.

That’s my personal view. We’ll see what the consensus is. I haven’t had a chance to socialize that with any of the members over the weekend, because we’ve all been very busy, but it’ll be part of the discussion for sure.

According to a report by The Bulwark’s Joe Perticone, at least two GOP California House members “want to stick it to the residents of their own state.”

Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA), whom Perticone describes as representing a district that hasn’t been harmed by these current fires but is nonetheless “wildfire-prone,” said he thought “it would be a mistake to grant money to the very same people responsible for the policies that have produced this disaster,” and added that he was willing to restrict aid to people in his own state because as a Californian, he was also “one of the victims of these policies,” which he described as “downright dangerous.”

Similarly, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) hails from a district that isn’t currently burning but has a recent past history of “devastating fires. While he told Perticone that it was his “priority” to rush aid funds to the victims “as quickly as possible,” he was still amenable to imposing conditions like reforms to water and forest management policies.

“I think that there’s a broader question of the federal government’s role in oversight going forward with what’s going on in California,” said Kiley, “because it’s clear that a lot of things went wrong, and we’re going to need to — I think there’s gotta be some accountability.”

UPDATE 10:45 pm ET: A spokesperson for Kiley emailed to clarify that while the congressman was quoted correctly, the context and paraphrasing were not correct. “His position is that we may need ‘safeguards’ to assure the money reaches victims as quickly and efficaciously as possible. He doesn’t believe ‘conditions’ is the right approach,” the spokesperson wrote, and highlighted another quote Kiley gave to The Hill:

Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) told The Hill “I think there should be safeguards to make sure the money gets to the victims,” adding, “I am not going to be happy about anything that interferes with that.” He did not, however, use the word “conditions” when pressed on Johnson’s comments.

“My word is safeguards. We need to have safeguards to make sure that the funds get to the people who need it,” he added.

The headline and text of this article have been updated accordingly.

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