HONOLUU (KHON2) — Senator Mazie Hirono shared what’s happening at the federal level that impacts us here in Hawaii.
The status of funding to help Lahaina rebuild is a major concern. KHON asked Hirono if she saw any impacts that would hurt future funding.
“I sure hope not because these kinds of disasters are happening all across the country very frequently. But we have a President who at one point said he would like to cut FEMA, and he thinks that maybe states should deal with the cost of their own recovery,” Hirono said.
Disaster recovery funding continues to have a lot of bipartisan support, she shared.
“There is no way the state of Hawaii could make up the billions of dollars that we needed to recover Lahaina. So there’s a lot of support, bipartisan support, thankfully, for continued funding for disaster recovery,” Hirono said. “And I’m going to, of course, push for as much of that as needed for Lahaina and Maui.”
Hirono also talked about the spotlight hearings that she’s been hosting.
What are the ‘spotlight hearings’?
“We call them ‘spotlight hearings’ because these are hearings that one would hope that the majority Republicans would have, but they’re not having these hearings focusing on cuts to education and what’s happening in lack of support for public schools,” Hirono said.
The senator hosted two spotlight hearings: one on public education and the other on overall cuts to education funding.
“They were holding back some $5 billion in funding for after school programs, teacher training programs. They gave no reason for it, and how can schools prepare for the lack of money, or the money coming through, and so without any warning, suddenly they said, ‘oh, okay, we’re going to release this money.’ This is how this regime is working,” Hirono said.
Hirono plans to hold her next spotlight hearing on higher education.
“I have these hearings that enable people to come and say, ‘look, this is what’s happening,’ and we need to call attention to it,” Hirono said. “The next one I’m doing is on higher education. That’s another area that the Trump regime is really cutting back on support.”