Obama's Sandy disaster aid boondoggle

Daniel Horowitz:
Democrats live by the dictum “never let a good crisis go to waste.” What better way to insert their campaign wish list into a Hurricane Sandy disaster aid bill?

To that end, Obama has submitted a $60.4 billion dollar aid request for recovery of damage from Hurricane Sandy. His proposal is chock full of items from his campaign wish list, and will be considered before the Senate this week.

In case you were thinking that the $60 billion price tag sounds too steep, you’re not missing something. Only $11.5 billion will go towards FEMA’s disaster relief fund. CBO projects that 64% of the funds will not be spent until FY 2015. The entire rationale of an emergency bill is that the aid money is desperately needed now. The fact that much of the funds will not be spent for several years reveals this as a liberal stimulus bill. Here are some of the items on Obama’s Santa list.
  • There are several requests for studying global warming in this bill
  • The bill requests another $9.7 billion for the National Flood Insurance Program, a 47% increase.  This is after the program has already received billions in taxpayer bailout money.
  • Other wasteful spending includes, $9 million to replace vehicles, $24.1 million to plant trees, and $32 million for Amtrak, $17 billion to the Community Development Fund, $500 million for Social Services Block Grants, $1 million for the Legal Services Corporation, and $150 million for fishery disasters as far away from the impact zone as American Samoa!
... 
Spending bills are supposed to be generated in the House.  The House should limit the aid to what FEMA needs for disaster relief.  The flood insurance program may also need to be replenished and they should look at that.  I have never heard of the government replacing flooded cars, and we have had our share of them in South Texas from previous storms.  It appears Obama is just trying for another stealth bailout of his bad investment in car companies.  That would be a clear conflict of interest.

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