This legislation received a lot of attention in the press and Speaker John Boehner received a great deal of criticism for supposedly "blocking" the emergency Sandy relief legislation from being voted on in the House after it passed the Senate.
What are the facts?
The U.S. Senate passed a bill late last year that was advertised as a $60 billion emergency relief package for Sandy victims and sent it to the House.
How reasonable a number is that? Consider the fact that the estimated insured losses from the storm are currently estimated at $25 billion. The entire insured losses from all disasters nationally in 2012 are estimated at $58 billion. Bear in mind that this is nearly double the average of annual insured losses from 2000 to 2011.
This should immediately tell you that something else is going on beyond "emergency relief". That becomes very evident when you look at what was in that Senate bill.
The fact is that only about $10 billion of the $60 billion had anything to do with emergency aid for the victims of Sandy. In fact, only $9 billion of the total amount in the bill was even slated to be spent in 2013. The rest is what some might call pure political pork. What else do you call it when a Hurricane Relief bill includes $150 million for Alaskan fisheries, $100 million for the federal Head Start program for poor pre-schoolers, $188 million for new Amtrak lines (not repair of lines caused by the storm, all new additional lines), $11 billion for public transportation projects, and $1 million for a performance arts festival in New York?
Harry Reid passed the bill through the Democrat controlled Senate and then sent everyone home. Since it was done with only days left in the session it was essentially a "take it or leave" deal for the House as there was no time to reconcile differing bills with the Senate. What ended up in Speaker Boehner's lap was fatter than any hog in his Southwestern Ohio Congressional District. He tabled the bill and it died with the end of the session on January 3.
Of course, anyone who wanted to slow down the process and trim the pork ends up being calling an unfeeling heel. It is not easy being Speaker John Boehner these days or anyone else who has any sense of fiscal sanity left.
The new House passed a $9.7 billion Sandy relief bill on January 4 that would have taken care of the immediate spending needs for the national flood insurance program. It easily passed 354 to 67 with bipartisan support. However, this amount was a far cry from the $60 billion bill the Senate passed and the howls on the political left and the country's Northeast continued unabated.
Boehner came back last week and put forth two bills before the The House of Representatives that added up to $50.7 billion. The first vote concerned $17 billion and included funds for relief and transportation projects. The second vote set aside $33 billion for future longer-term projects. Any attempts by the Republicans to scale the bills back were beaten back by almost all Democrats and a handful of Republicans (mostly from the Northeast). Attempts to offset the increased spending with budget cuts elsewhere were also defeated. In the end, 49 Republicans and 192 Democrats voted for the entire package. Only 1 Democrat voted No and he was jointed by 179 Republicans. That was Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee.
Therefore, a $60 billion "emergency relief" package that is pretty close to the bill passed the Senate in the last session now will be reconsidered again in the newly formed Senate.
It is probably a foregone conclusion that the entire $60 billion bill will pass again in the Senate and go to President Obama for his signature. Bear in mind that $60 billion is also about the annual amount that will be raised from the recent income tax increase. It literally is as if the money is coming in on one hand and going out on the other. If you thought that additional tax revenue was to help reduce the deficit, think again. At least for this year.
This is just another example of the spending insanity that seems to permeate Washington. I am all for helping New York and New Jersey recover from this storm. That is what it means to be an American. However, it is time to stop taking advantage of real emergency spending situations with pork and politics.
It is also time to start budgeting for these contingencies ( I know that is a completely ridiculous proposition for the Senate who has not even produced a budget in almost 4 years) as we know there will be rainy, windy and other bad, bad days in our country from time to time.
It is a little late to do that on this one but how about a common sense idea like cutting our foreign aid budget this year to partially offset this added cost? This is a suggestion that Senator Rand Paul has made. For example, why are we shipping foreign aid money to Egypt this year when we have a need for domestic aid to New York and New Jersey?
When is the insanity going to stop? It looks to me that it will not stop by any action in Washington. That means that when it does stop, it is going to be a very hard stop.
If that happens we are going to quickly find ourselves in a very different world. That is a world when people may look at Rand Paul much differently than they do today. It could mean that someone on the far, far left may also look like they have the right answers. If our debt train goes off the tracks, I think it provides an opening for those on the fringes of either party to propose solutions that could go mainstream that today would elicit barely a snicker.
It is a long way to 2016. Fasten your seatbelt and stay away from the straight jacket. We need some people to maintain their senses and understand the nonsense in Washington.
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