Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump suggested Thursday that Puerto Rico is going to have to shoulder more responsibility for recovery efforts from Hurricane Maria, saying the federal government's emergency responders can't stay there "forever." 
 
 His comments -- in which he also blamed the beleaguered island for a financial crisis "largely of their own making" and infrastructure that was a "disaster" before the hurricane -- come as Puerto Rico still reels from a lack of electricity, public health access and a rising death toll. The remarks quickly prompted cries from Democratic lawmakers, who argue that Puerto Rico still needs a lot of help, as well as the mayor of San Juan, who said they were "unbecoming" and appeared to come from a "hater in chief." 
 
 Meanwhile, Texas and Florida -- two states Trump won during last year's presidential election -- also were struck by severe hurricanes recently, but the President has made no public indication that the federal government is pulling back on its response there. 
 
 The President wrote in two separate tweets, "'Puerto Rico survived the Hurricanes, now a financial crisis looms largely of their own making.' says Sharyl Attkisson. A total lack of........accountability say the Governor. Electric and all infrastructure was disaster before hurricanes. Congress to decide how much to spend..." 
 
 "Puerto Rico survived the Hurricanes, now a financial crisis looms largely of their own making." says Sharyl Attkisson. A total lack of..... 
 
 ...accountability say the Governor. Electric and all infrastructure was disaster before hurricanes. Congress to decide how much to spend.... 
 
 He continued in a third tweet: "We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!" 
 
 ...We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever! 
 
 Attkisson is a journalist who works for conservative Sinclair Broadcasting. 
 
 White House chief of staff John Kelly said at the White House briefing Thursday that Trump's tweet was "exactly accurate" because first responders "are not going to be there forever." 
 
 "The minute you go anywhere as a first responder, and this would apply certainly to the military, you will try really hard to work yourself out of a job," he said. "There will be a period in which we hope sooner rather than later, the US military and (the Federal Emergency Management Agency), generally speaking, can withdraw because then the government and people of Puerto Rico are recovering sufficiently to start the process of rebuilding." 
 
 A FEMA official told CNN the agency has "no hard deadline" on when it plans to pull resources from the island. 
 
 "It all will be determined by the conditions on the ground," the official said. 
 
 The official said once things are "stabilized" in Puerto Rico, FEMA will "pull back resources as appropriate," adding that's the "natural progression of a response to a disaster." 
 
 FEMA's focus, the official said, is to "move from the response phase to recovery," adding the recovery phase often takes years. 
 
 Dire situation 
 
 Trump's tweets come three weeks after the hurricane first struck the island, which remains largely without power. The death toll from the storm has risen to 45, authorities have said, and at least 113 people remain unaccounted for, according to Karixia Ortiz, a spokeswoman for Puerto Rico's Department of Public Safety. 
 
 The recovery has moved slowly since Maria struck the US territory on September 20, leaving most of the island without basic services such as power and running water, according to residents, relief workers and local elected officials. Hospitals throughout the cash-strapped island of 3.4 million people have been running low on medicine and fuel, and residents and local elected officials have said they expect the death toll to rise. 
 
 The water situation is so dire, the Environmental Protection Agency said in a news release Wednesday, that residents on the island have reportedly been trying to obtain water from Superfund sites -- which are bodies of water contaminated by hazardous waste. The EPA advised against "tampering with sealed and locked wells or drinking from these wells, as it may be dangerous to people's health." 
 
 Administration officials sought to downplay Trump's comments Thursday morning. 
 
 Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, testifying before the House financial services committee, said that he has "no intention" of abandoning recovery efforts in Puerto Rico. 
 
 "They're a very important part of who we are," he said, later adding: "(Puerto Rico) should not be abandoned." 
 
 And White House press secretary Sarah Sanders reaffirmed federal support to the island. 
 
 "Our job in any disaster affected location is to help the community respond and recover from that disaster. We continue to do so with the full force of the US government and its resources in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands and other affected areas," she said. "Successful recoveries do not last forever; they should be as swift as possible to help people resume their normal lives." 
 
 Democrats, however, pounced on Trump's tweets. 
 
 "Puerto Ricans are Americans, and we don't abandon each other. The federal government should stay in Puerto Rico as long as necessary," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, tweeted 
 
 Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted, "Puerto Rico is still facing a humanitarian crisis. @realDonaldTrump seems more worried about blaming hurricane victims than helping them." 
 
 And San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, who has feuded publicly with the President over the federal response, said on Twitter that Trump was incapable of fulfilling the moral imperative to help the people of PR. Shame on you.!" 
 
 Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said in a news conference Thursday that he called the White House looking for clarification on Trump's tweets. 
 
 "The law establishes that the aid we are getting from FEMA has to be established for the duration of emergency efforts," he said. 'It's not a decision as is, it's a law that all the resources must be available for Puerto Rico." 
 
 However Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pennsylvania, who is a member of the House foreign affairs committee, told CNN's Chris Cuomo Thursday there's only "so much" the US can do to help Puerto Rico. 
 
 "I would then again say, 'What is enough?' What is the right amount to satisfy whoever says we're not doing enough," he said on "New Day." "It's regrettable and it's sad for those people but there only is physically, humanly possible so much that any nation could do in the wake of devastation." 
 
 He continued: "I lived through it myself, a victim of floods on numerous occasions, had to clean it up, and I will tell you, nobody came to help us, we handled it ourselves." 
 
 House to vote on disaster relief 
 
 Acting Department of Homeland Security Elaine Duke will make her second trip to the island on Thursday. 
 
 House Speaker Paul Ryan will lead a bipartisan delegation visiting Puerto Rico on Friday, according to the speaker's office. 
 
 Ryan will travel to the island with House Appropriations Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey and Rep. Nita Lowey of New York, the top Democrat on the panel. Puerto Rico's sole representative in Congress, Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, and House GOP Conference Chairwoman Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers also will be part of the congressional delegation. 
 
 The House of Representatives approved a $36.5 billion disaster aid package Thursday to help victims struggling to recover from a string of devastating hurricanes and wildfires. The measure now heads to the Senate, which returns from a weeklong recess next week. ||||| Federal officials privately admit there is a massive shortage of meals in Puerto Rico three weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated the island. 
 
 Officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) say that the government and its partners are only providing 200,000 meals a day to meet the needs of more than 2 million people. That is a daily shortfall of between 1.8m and 5.8m meals. 
 
 “We are 1.8 million meals short,” said one senior Fema official. “That is why we need the urgency. And it’s not going away. We’re doing this much today, but it has to be sustained over several months.” 
 
 Mark Zuckerberg 'tours' flooded Puerto Rico in bizarre virtual reality promo Read more 
 
 The scale of the food crisis dwarfs the more widely publicized challenges of restoring power and communications. More than a third of Puerto Ricans are still struggling to live without drinking water. 
 
 However, Fema provides no details on food deliveries, keeping its public statements to the most general terms. On its website, Fema says it has provided “millions of meals and millions of liters of water”. 
 
 In fact many of those meals are military ready-to-eat meals that civilians find hard to digest if consumed for more than a few days. 
 
 Now the biggest provider of cooked meals says Fema is putting its operations at risk of closure. 
 
 World Central Kitchen, founded by chef José Andrés, cooks and distributes 90,000 meals a day through a network of local chefs and kitchens. 
 
 Its Fema contract, to provide just 20,000 meals a day, ended on Tuesday. Fema insists it is bound by federal rules that mean it will take several weeks for a new contract to emerge to feed more Americans. 
 
 “There is no urgency in the government response to this humanitarian crisis,” Andrés said. “They have all the officials and armed guards at headquarters, but they have no information about the island. They don’t even have a map they can share about who needs food. Fema is over-paying and it is under-delivering.” 
 
 According to Donald Trump, his own response to the disaster in Puerto Rico has been exceptional. 
 
 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Nobody could have done what I’ve done for #PuertoRico with so little appreciation. So much work! pic.twitter.com/k2jAkIpfjI 
 
 “Nobody could have done what I’ve done for Puerto Rico with so little appreciation. So much work!” he tweeted on Sunday. The tweet was posted along with a White House video of helicopters and trucks in Puerto Rico, and a title card saying, “What the fake news media will not show you in Puerto Rico.” 
 
 However, the Trump administration has limited insight into whether food is getting distributed and how many hungry Americans are struggling to find food. 
 
 Trump is receiving little appreciation from the American people for his response to the Puerto Rico disaster. According to a recent poll for the Associated Press, just 32% of Americans approve of Trump’s performance after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. 
 
 That poll was conducted before Trump visited the island last week, when he tossed paper towels into a crowd in San Juan. The mayor of San Juan called the sight of him throwing rolls of paper “terrible and abominable”. 
 
 Conditions on Puerto Rico remain dire; just 16% of islanders having access to electricity. While commercial flights have resumed, and most gas stations have reopened, much of the island’s economy remains at a standstill. Less than 400 miles of the island’s 5,000 miles of road are open to traffic. 
 
 Many residents are voting with their feet and leaving their homes behind. The population of the island of Vieques has declined from around 9,000 to little more than 6,000, according to relief workers. ||||| Tweet with a location 
 
 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Why do you continue to treat Puerto Ricans differently than other Americans when it comes to natural disasters? ||||| FEMA needs to stay until the job is done and right now, it's not even close to done. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
 
 / Updated By Adam Edelman 
 
 President Donald Trump slammed Puerto Rico on Thursday, saying its power grid and infrastructure were a "disaster" before two hurricanes hit last month and he threatened to pull federal emergency management workers from the storm-ravaged island. 
 
 His comments drew furious responses from Democrats who charged he is treating Americans there like "second-class citizens." 
 
 Trump tweeted, "'Puerto Rico survived the Hurricanes, now a financial crisis looms largely of their own making.' says Sharyl Attkisson. A total lack of........accountability say the Governor. Electric and all infrastructure was disaster before hurricanes." 
 
 (It wasn't clear why Trump referred to Attkisson, a conservative journalist who has repeatedly defended him.) 
 
 "Congress to decide how much to spend.......We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!" Trump wrote in another Tweet. 
 
 Trump's latest attacks on Puerto Rico immediately touched off harsh criticism from Democrats. 
 
 The barrage of tweets come just weeks after Puerto Rico was slammed by Hurricane Maria. FEMA said that as of Tuesday, 21 days since Maria made landfall, 84 percent of people on the island remained without electricity and only 63 percent had potable water. Many others have been without housing and basic necessities. 
 
 Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York tweeted a question to the president: "Why do you continue to treat Puerto Ricans differently than other Americans when it comes to natural disasters?" 
 
 "FEMA needs to stay until the job is done and right now, it's not even close to done. There is still devastation, Americans are still dying. FEMA needs to stay until the job is done," he added. 
 
 House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California posted, "We don't abandon Americans in their time of need." 
 
 "PR & USVI need MORE help, not less, from the federal govt," Pelosi wrote, referring to the U.S. Virgin Islands. At a press conference later in the morning, Pelosi called Trump's tweets "heartbreaking." 
 
 Rep. Darren Soto of Florida told NBC News: "Trump continues to treat Americans in Puerto Rico as second-class citizens. He wouldn’t be saying this about federal recovery efforts in Texas or Mississippi." 
 
 House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland said: "It is shameful that President Trump is threatening to abandon these Americans when they most need the federal government’s help. He has a responsibility to our fellow citizens in Puerto Rico and on the U.S. Virgin Islands to ensure that every federal resource is made available to assist in recovery and rebuilding for as long as it takes." 
 
 Reaction from Puerto Rico was swift, too. 
 
 In a lengthy statement, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, who Trump attacked after she made headlines criticizing his response to the disaster, asked "every American that has love, and not hate in their hearts, to stand with Puerto Rico and let this President know we WILL NOT BE LEFT TO DIE." 
 
 In addition, the island's governor, Ricardo Rosselló, tweeted that "U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico are requesting the support that any of our fellow citizens would receive across our Nation." 
 
 Just over 24 hours after his original tweets, Trump returned to Twitter Friday to say he would "always be" with the people of Puerto Rico, but repeated his original claim regarding "how bad things were" on the island before the hurricanes. 
 
 "The wonderful people of Puerto Rico, with their unmatched spirit, know how bad things were before the H's. I will always be with them!" he tweeted Friday. 
 
 Maria Gonzalez, who has remained stranded in a remote area of western Puerto Rico, broke down in tears this week as she told NBC News that she had cancer and was in grave need of a generator. 
 
 She offered a desperate plea to FEMA: "Come on! Do what you're supposed to do." 
 
 FEMA says that 19,000 civilian and military service personnel are working in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The agency is hosting job fairs in Ponce to hire 1,200 people for the relief effort. 
 
 Later Thursday, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Elaine Duke, is planning a return visit to the Puerto Rico amid the announcement Wednesday that FEMA is expanding its leadership team there. 
 
 Nevertheless, criticism has steadily mounted over the Trump administration’s response to what is being called an unfolding humanitarian crisis, with some likening the situation to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Rosselló raised the death toll from the storm to 43. 
 
 But Trump himself has repeatedly lashed out at Puerto Rican officials, including Cruz, who has pleaded for more federal assistance. 
 
 On Sept. 30, Trump tweeted that Cruz had "poor leadership ability" and said Puerto Rican officials "want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort." 
 
 Days later, during an Oct. 3 visit to the island, Trump said U.S. relief efforts in Puerto Rico, bankrupt before the storm, had "thrown our budget a little out of whack" and the president was filmed casually tossing rolls of paper towels into a crowd at a disaster relief center. Cruz has criticized Trump for the incident, calling it "terrible and abominable." 
 
 Vice President Mike Pence, however, said during his own visit to the island last week that the White House would stick with Puerto Ricans for as long as the recovery would take. 
 
 "We are with you today, we will be with you tomorrow, we will be with you every day until Puerto Rico rebuilds and recovers bigger and better than ever before," Pence said last Friday.
– President Trump is warning that hurricane relief for Puerto Rico has an end date even as federal officials acknowledge a massive food shortage on the island three weeks after Hurricane Maria. "We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!" Trump tweeted Thursday, per NBC News, adding "electric and all infrastructure was disaster before hurricanes." He said it would be up to Congress "to decide how much to spend." The comments are in stark contrast to Mike Pence's message to Puerto Ricans last week that the government "will be with you every single day until Puerto Rico is restored bigger and better than ever before," per the Washington Post. Democrats were quick to lash out at Trump's tweets Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer among them. In a tweet, Schumer accused the president of treating Puerto Ricans "differently than other Americans," adding, "FEMA needs to stay until the job is done and right now, it's not even close to done." Indeed, FEMA officials say the government is providing 200,000 meals a day to Puerto Ricans when at least 2 million per day are needed, reports the Guardian, which notes more than a third of Puerto Ricans are still without safe drinking water. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, residents are so desperate for a drink that they've attempted to take water from Superfund sites contaminated with hazardous waste, reports CNN.