Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says future FEMA funding could be impacted by cost of ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’

FRANKFORT, Ky. (FOX 56) — With the agency on President Trump’s wish list for cuts, Sen. Rand Paul told reporters Monday he believed there is a “role” for FEMA to play in responding to natural disasters like the ones that took place in London and Somerset last month. However, Paul said he wants to make sure the federal government has a way to pay for the agency without adding more debt.

“We are willing to do what we can to make it better. I know it takes a long time,” Sen. Paul told a gathering of first responders and local leaders at the London-Corbin Airport on Monday.

As the cleanup continues around the site, which took a direct hit from the tornado, there are some mangled buildings and rubble piles that look like the disaster happened just yesterday. Sen. Paul joined local leaders in London and Somerset to simply say “thanks” to first responders, now only just able to catch a breath as their communities recover.

“From trying to find survivors to recovering bodies to then trying to help clear rubble. In the days preceding that, these same responders that hadn’t slept, from doing the emergency services became a neighbor,” London Mayor Randall Weddle said.

“From having visited Mayfield through the years, it’s taken several years to come back, but you will come back,” Paul said.

Paul assured that the federal government will help where it can with recovery. With President Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill” the next big item on the Senate agenda, Paul said future FEMA funding isn’t necessarily a part of the bill’s debate but believed that funding could be affected by the bill’s overall cost.

“I think the debt is a real problem. So, you talk about how do we fund FEMA when we have an interest payment of $1 trillion? That kind of expanding need is pushing out expenses like FEMA which most people agree needs to be there during times of disaster. But if we keep borrowing more, that interest payment keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger,” Paul told FOX 56.

Paul said he will not support the president’s budget reconciliation bill unless it no longer raises the debt ceiling, prompting Trump to publish social media criticism over the weekend. “If Senator Rand Paul votes against our Great, Big, Beautiful Bill, he is voting for, along with the Radical Left Democrats, a 68% tax increase and, perhaps even more importantly, a first-time-ever default on U.S. debt. Rand will be playing right into the hands of the Democrats, and the GREAT people of Kentucky will never forgive him,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform.