Ending the Day on a Light Note
3 hours ago
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Congress Running Out On Disaster Funds?
The United States' FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) is running out of funds. People expected funds would completely run out by Saturday which could lead to a partial shut down of the government. The Republicans in the House passed a bill adding $3.65 billion to disaster relief funds. On Thursday, A bipartisan vote in the House is expected to be passed that will add more funds to FEMA and settle the strife. Would Congress ever let funds dry out and let the government partially shut down?
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2 comments:
One thing that I found a little confusing is that they (the reporter and the news agency) constantly referred to FEMA as part of the government. When FEMA is more like a government agency. I addressed the FEMA spending topic when I did HMC last year, and one particular fact that I remember was that FEMA actually used a lot of its money on the spot and that logistics were a big issue (logistics in the fact that it took a relatively long time to respond to a disaster and thus the costs of the disaster were elevated). I think that FEMA should use soem of these newly allocated funds this year to preparedness, granted there is only so prepared someone can be. However, if it took less time to respond, the damages/ cots would be lower and thus cost less money in the long run.
Another potential solution would be to allocate budget to improving things such as levies and earthquake-proofing buildings. This way, there would be less damage overall to deal with.
-Sophia Wienbar
To address the question of whether Congress would ever let funds run out, I think the answer is no. If Congress were to not fix the funding problem, that would obviously stop funding for FEMA projects. These projects include the cleaning up of the recent Hurricane Irene, and even the 2005 Hurricane Katrina. This, in turn, would cause public outcry and could possibly ruin the Congressmen and women's potential reelections, which is something that they do not want.
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