On Thursday Senators Wyden (D-OR) and Crapo (R-ID) introduced the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, aimed at ending the cycle of fire borrowing at the USDA Forest Service and Department of the Interior. Late in federal fiscal year 2013 the USDA Forest Service transferred more than $600 million from non-fire accounts to cover the cost of emergency wildland fire suppression expenses, raising the total amount transferred to pay for suppression expenses in the past two years alone to more than $1 billion. The Wildfire Disaster Funding Act would give the USDA and DOI access to emergency funding through the disaster cap utilized by FEMA for other major natural disasters.
