The ever-reliable supporters of big government at
CNN offer
this interesting insight:
Political antagonism toward deficits may exacerbate the long-term
impact of natural disasters by lessening the federal government’s
ability to help.
This, like the approach to every other issue that becomes
the subject of liberal cogitation, assumes that humans are too
stupid to change their behavior when their environment
changes.
To wit, if states know that there isn’t a free bucket of
federal money awaiting should something bad happen, they will
prudently build up their reserves, creating “rainy day funds” for
disasters like Irene. The same goes for individuals who, whether
self-insuring like states or purchasing insurance policies, will
better prepare for disasters rather than relying on the forced
charity of residents of other states to subsidize their bad luck or
intentional risk-taking. Furthermore, the discipline imposed by
self-insuring or by the provisions of a private policy will improve
not only the financial preparations for disasters, but also the
physical preparations for them. (How many of you have added an
alarm system to your house or car to lower your insurance premiums
and your own risk?)
I like the part of the story in which the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, commonly known as FEMA, says it won’t
immediately honor what certain Senators think are its
responsibilities but are not yet funded. Here’s the relevant
section of the piece:
FEMA is making its own adjustments. To make room in its
budget for cleanup efforts after Irene, the agency is delaying some
rebuilding projects in Joplin, Missouri, where devastating
tornadoes struck this year.
“For any projects that have not come in for approval,
we’re not going to be able to fund those at this point. We’re going
to postpone those,” FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said at a White
House briefing Monday, referring to some efforts in
Joplin.
Missouri’s two U.S. senators released statements blasting
the bureaucratic move.
“If FEMA can’t fulfill its promise to our state because we
have other disasters, that’s unacceptable,” Republican Sen. Roy
Blunt said in a statement.
The lesson here is that Missouri and other states
shouldn’t rely on the federal government in the first place if
their goal isn’t to make war (whether on foreign soldiers or on
American entrepreneurs). After all, if the federal government can’t
even do well those few non-military things it’s actually supposed
to do, like immigration, why do we want or expect it to do a good
job with things it was never supposed to do, like being involved in
flood insurance (or health insurance for that matter)?
Like the famed blind squirrel,
Ron Paul gets it right when it comes
to FEMA, arguing that it completely perverts the idea of insurance
through the National Flood Insurance Program. Since when is it the
responsibility of a Coloradoan to subsidize the risk taken by
someone who doesn’t just build a beach house in a hurricane-prone
coastal region, but who then uses other people’s money to rebuild
it when big bad hurricane Wolf blows it down?
Sure, when
private markets provide flood
insurance, the price is higher than the
government-issued and taxpayer-subsidized program we have now and
would thus likely pressure the real estate values of homes whose
owners need the insurance. But that’s life. Among the rights
granted in our Constitution, one does not find the right to have
others assume your risk. Such socialization of risk (as seen most
famously in the TARP program, other bank bailouts, and the Obama
Administration’s destruction of decades of law in the
reorganizations of GM and Chrysler) is anathema to the Founders’
explicit aims. After all, the conception of the role of the state
to protect “life, liberty and property” as originally drafted for
the Declaration of Independence wasn’t about government making Mr.
Smith protect Mr. Jones’ property. If Jones’ property is more
likely to be destroyed in its particular location, then it is worth
less than it otherwise would be without that risk… and it shouldn’t
be Smith’s problem.
FEMA’s most famous adventure was their disastrous handling
of Hurricane Katrina. While President Obama called FEMA’s response
to Hurricane Irene “exemplary,” perhaps the reason it seems so is
that governors along the East Coast took the lessons of Katrina to
heart and did their jobs as chief executives rather than relying on
Big Brother. FEMA seems like it did a good job because it was asked
to do so little — so far. However, with requests for federal aid
coming from states along our Atlantic Coast, FEMA will have plenty
of opportunity to show whether it is still the dysfunctional
bureaucracy we’ve come to know and, to put it kindly, be somewhat
skeptical of. But, like a Yugo, even if it performs OK, that
doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
And to the extent that FEMA’s role in the Irene disaster
ends up being handing out checks, it inevitably drifts into another
vote-buying scheme for whichever administration is in power at the
time, leading bureaucrats into the irresistible temptation to make
Smith feel good about the government by using Jones’ money.
As Milton Friedman
said, the least careful way that money is
ever spent is when someone (like government) is spending another
person’s money on yet another recipient. When A is spending B’s
money on C, neither A nor C care how much or how wisely that money
is being spent. That’s actually putting it kindly, as both A and C
have the incentive to spend as much of B’s money as possible, thus
adding government budget disaster to natural disaster.
Instead of complaining about the limitations of the
federal government when it comes to disaster relief, the obvious
lesson of Hurricane Irene is that even for storms that ravage a
half dozen states in a weekend, local response and responsibility
is preferable to relying on a federal organization. FEMA, like all
federal bureaucracies and despite what I assume to be the best
intentions of most of its employees, is run by people who are
unlikely to understand local subtleties in any given disaster area.
And, as we’re seeing now, disaster response by a federal agency
allows federal politics to interfere in what are truly the most
localized problems where localized knowledge and incentive to help
one’s friends and neighbors should be of great benefit.
For example — and understanding that the scale of the
disasters was different and that New Orleans had more than its
share of problems prior to Hurricane Katrina — four years after
Katrina, New Orleans was still waiting
for the federal government to take care of its lingering school
problems. In a way, Katrina did the educational system in that city
a favor, “wash[ing] away the old, failed system of public
education.” Yet the public school system there, despite the mostly
beneficial addition of many charter schools, is still far behind
schedule and over budget on rebuilding as they live in a world
where fiscal responsibility is deadened by the opiate of OPM (other
people’s money.)
In Joplin, Missouri, on the other hand, where fully a
third of the city was erased by a tornado in May, schools opened on
time just three months later, including a high school that the city
creatively fashioned from what used to be a department store. As a
commenter on the left-leaning Huffington Post website
opined, “I agree those in Joplin helped each other out after
the devastating tornadoes. They did not wait for FEMA or the
federal government to intervene. They got to work. I do feel for
those people in Irene’s path. But self reliance and common sense go
a long way too.”
