Congress, don't do to Harvey what you did after Sandy | Editorial
Don’t leave people hanging. Don’t use this disaster to score political points.
The expectation is that Congress will approve initial aid for Hurricane Harvey soon after Labor Day and then come back with a full relief package later. The White House is requesting $7.9 billion to take care of immediate needs for FEMA and small business loans.
But that won’t begin to cover the long-term recovery costs of communities swamped by Harvey’s historic rainfall.
With vast stretches of the Houston metro area still under water, damage totals aren’t clear yet. But preliminary estimates by Moody’s Analytics put losses at $86 billion to $108 billion. If so, it would make Harvey the second-most expensive disaster in U. S. history behind Hurricane Katrina and the levee breaches in 2005.
Many of the property losses from Harvey will be uninsured, since an estimated 80 percent of homes and businesses in the Houston area weren’t covered by flood insurance.
This will be a long, complicated recovery.
Here is our plea to Congress: Don’t leave people hanging. Don’t posture. Don’t snipe. Don’t use this disaster to score political points.
People’s lives have been upended. Whole neighborhoods are severely damaged. Businesses are ruined. It’s not the time for political squabbling.
After Hurricane Sandy in 2012,New York and New Jersey residents waited for months for rebuilding aid because Congress was so divided. Some members wanted to offset hurricane aid with cuts to the budget. Texas Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn and Louisiana Reps. Steve Scalise, John Fleming and Bill Cassidy (who then was in the House) voted against part or all of the Sandy package. So did 20 members of the Texas House delegation.
Although the effort failed, the budget debate unnecessarily slowed the flow of federal money to Sandy victims.
Our nation’s deficit is a serious concern, but disaster victims shouldn’t be held hostage to a philosophical discussion. Recovery from catastrophic damage hinges on how quickly a community can get residents home and schools and businesses open. The federal government plays a major role in that.
Now Sens. Cruz and Cornyn and their House colleagues are in the position of asking for a massive aid package for their state. Louisiana will need federal recovery money for Harvey as well, although far less than Texas.
Fortunately, signals from the New York and New Jersey delegations are that they won’t punish Harvey victims for the way Sandy aid was handled.
They are calling out Sen. Cruz — who falsely claimed that two-thirds of the Sandy bill was for non-disaster spending– for hypocrisy. He deserves that, but his constituents don’t.
After Katrina, then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert and others blamed New Orleanians for choosing to live in a swampy region and questioned whether we should rebuild. As if a city established almost 300 years ago at the mouth of one of the world’s great rivers were expendable.
Mr. Hastert back-tracked under pressure, and Congress approved $10.5 billion for disaster relief in Louisiana and Mississippi four days after Katrina made landfall. Six days later, another $51.8 billion had been approved. That was much faster than after Sandy.
But then things slowed down. Some members of Congress decided those appropriations were enough, even though Gulf Coast damage topped $110 billion and even though the flood damage in New Orleans was due to the collapse of the Army Corps of Engineers’ levees.
Eventually, with a push from President George W. Bush’s administration, money was approved to rebuild homes, businesses, schools, hospitals and the flood control system for greater New Orleans. But it wasn’t until June 2006 — 10 months after Katrina hit — that Congress OK’d funding to help rebuild thousands of homes damaged by the levee breaks. Meanwhile, homeowners — and the city — were in limbo.
As after Katrina and Sandy, recovery from Hurricane Harvey will be a massive undertaking. There are badly damaged homes, businesses, schools, roads, bridges and other broken infrastructure from Rockport to Houston to Beaumont. The total federal aid needed for Harvey will have a big price tag, and there will be legitimate debates about what and how much to cover.
But Congress shouldn’t drag out that discussion unnecessarily. It would be mean-spirited and destructive to leave Harvey’s victims waiting for help.
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