COMMENTARY | When will Democrats learn that cutting spending means they have to cut spending?
Congress is playing chicken with a stopgap funding bill that will continue to fund the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other disaster-relief agencies through the end of the fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30. Competing bills offered in each house differ in the amount of supplemental funding as well as whether that funding should be paid for with spending cuts in other areas or whether it should be simply added to the debt.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has crafted a $7 billion package and moved it through the Senate with the help of several conservative Republicans. Whether he will be able to count on their support as the Congress reconciles the differences between Reid's bill and the House-approved measure is uncertain, but Reid appears ready to rumble with his political opponents over it.
"We're not going to cave in on this," Reid said according to an Associated Press report.
Nice approach to compromise there, senator.
Disasters cannot be predicted, of course, and the federal government has an obligation to assist whenever possible, but the spending cannot come without cost. Whether the level of supplemental funding is $3.5 billion as proposed by the House or $7 billion as the Senate suggests is irrelevant. Congress always will appropriate whatever is needed in times of disaster. The point here is that it should not be added to the deficit to accomplish it.
For too long, the federal government has just borrowed money whenever needed with no consideration to how it would be paid back. This "$3 billion here, $7 billion there" attitude over the decades has painted us into the debt corner we are faced with today. The days of making the easy decision to simply borrow the money are over. It's time for the difficult choices.
There is definitely a need for additional disaster funding, especially after the wide-spread catastrophes that hit Joplin, Mo., earlier this year, plus the hurricane damages that struck the East Coast and Gulf regions. Whatever added funds Congress may add to disaster relief need to be offset in some other area of the federal budget. It's what the American people have to do when they face an unexpected expense and it's high time to federal government learns to do the same.
