Napolitano: Safety, not offsetting costs, should be Congress's priority in wake of Irene

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says the safety of Americans - not budget concerns - should be the priority of Congress in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene.

Speaking to reporters at a Tuesday Christian Science Monitor event, Napolitano said that offsetting relief aid with commensurate budget cuts should not be Congress's number one priority.

"That should not be the first concern of Congress, and I don't think it is," Napolitano said. "I think the first concern of Congress is whether we need to protect the safety and security of the people that we are all privileged to represent."

More than 40 people are dead and more than 2.5 million remain without power in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, which tore through the East Coast over the weekend. While Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Craig Fugate has declined to predict how much recovery efforts from Hurricane Irene will cost, many predict it could run well into the billions.

Eric Cantor, a member of the House Republican leadership, said Monday that whatever bills the federal government racks up in the recovery efforts will have to be offset with spending cuts elsewhere.

"This is a time, an appropriate instance, where there is a federal government role," Cantor said on Fox News. "We will find the money if there is a need for additional monies. But those monies are not unlimited, and what we've always said is we offset that which has already been funded."

Napolitano conceded on Tuesday that cleaning up in the wake of the storm would likely be expensive, but noted that "Congress knows that this is historically the way disaster relief funding has been handled."

"We know that Irene is going to be a very expensive storm, that's just the plain fact of it," Napolitano said. "The assessments are now just being made."

She noted that "grumblings" about the storm being overhyped reflected "what I like to call the blinding clarity of hindsight."

"We all had to be prepared based on the best information that was available before the fact," she said. "This still was a deadly storm. We lost lives in this storm. The damages will be significant."