White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said Wednesday that the Trump administration will "absolutely" have the money to pay for relief and revitalization efforts after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, as preliminary estimates top $200 billion.
"The priority right now is still taking care of the people who need it right away," Mulvaney told Jake Tapper on CNN. "We will start to do things like measure the damage.
"It is going to be a significant amount of money. Yes, the federal government is going to step up.
"It is really too early for a bunch of different reasons to start focusing on specific numbers," Mulvaney cautioned. "It would be appropriate to see what money FEMA would need to get through the medium term, maybe the end of the year."
The Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates that Irma destroyed 25 percent of the homes in the Florida Keys, where about 70,000 people live by the sea in trailers, small houses and multimillion-dollar mansions. Estimates of the damage in the Keys is as high as 65 percent of property.
It's unclear exactly how many businesses were ruined, but the total could be high.
In other areas along Florida's southwestern coast, FEMA said that as many as 66 percent of the area's electrical customers were still without power Wednesday.
In Texas, FEMA has ordered as many as 4,500 manufactured housing units to help people who are left without homes after Harvey dumped as much as 52 inches of water in some areas over four days.
Agency officials say about 560,000 Texas families are registered for FEMA's housing assistance program.
Mulvaney said that the White House would not have strong rebuilding estimates until the end of the year.
"We'll handle this in a business-like, responsible fashion while still showing tremendous compassion for the folks who have been injured."