Budget Ahead for Disaster Relief
Eric Cantor is right to insist that disaster relief payments to Missouri and other tornado-damaged locales be offset with cuts elsewhere in the budget. Helping people in times of disaster is an important government function and there’s surely enough waste somewhere in the budget to pay for whatever Missouri needs. But one-time offsets aren’t enough: Congress should do what it should have done more than two centuries ago and create a permanent honest-to-god trust fund to pay for disaster relief on an ongoing basis.
Let’s start with the facts: contrary to some libertarian fantasies, the federal government has, always played a major role in disaster relief. In fact, President Thomas Jefferson signed the first disaster relief legislation, the 1803 Congressional Act intended to help fire-damaged Portsmouth New Hampshire, into law. Every other Congress from that point on has authorized some sort of disaster relief legislation. Whatever the merits of getting the federal government entirely out of the disaster relief business the federal government—and national governments everywhere—have always provided for citizens following disasters. They ought to.
Since we know disasters will happen (and likely increase in number as population grows into more disaster prone areas) it makes no sense to rely on ad hoc appropriations to fund them. Although there is an informal entity colloquially known as the “Disaster Relief Fund” it’s a purely administrative creation with no authorization in statute and no meaningful funding beyond what Congress gives it on an ad hoc basis. While President Obama took a half-honest step by including an “allowance” for disaster relief in his most recent budget proposal, he didn’t go the whole way and actually ask Congress to pre-appropriate funds to cover disasters. (This made all budget numbers look slightly better.)
Since disaster spending will happen, Congress should simply appropriate a given sum each year based on a ten year rolling average of disaster spending (perhaps excluding mega-disasters like Hurricane Katrina) and count the money as “spent” from the moment it goes into the disaster fund. To protect the fund from fiscal tricks, furthermore, a special board of trustees with a mix of federal and state officials should oversee the fund and sign off on disbursements requested by the President. The very biggest disasters would and should continue to require special appropriations but with a fund, the nation could deal with most disasters without requiring special appropriations, last minute program cuts, or budgetary tricks. Federal disaster relief is necessary. Congress should be honest about how the nation pays for it.
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