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MTA Escalator under water at South Ferry during Superstorm Sandy
Late on Friday, the Administration made a $60.4 billion supplemental appropriation requestfor dealing with the effects of Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast. The request went directly to House Speaker John Boehner. The total is actually a bit higher than estimated. This is a rough sketch of what the Administration plans to use the funds for:
In total, the Administration requests $60.4 billion in Federal resources for response, recovery and mitigation related to Hurricane Sandy damage in all affected States, This includes efforts to repair damage to homes and public infrastructure and to help affected communities prepare for future storms [...] Our Nation has an obligation to assist those who suffered losses and who lack adequate resources to rebuild their lives. At the same time, we are committed to ensuring Federal resources are used responsibly and that the recovery effort is a shared undertaking: private insurers must fulfill their commitment to the region; public assistance must be targeted for public benefit; resources must be directed to those in greatest need; and impacted States and localities must contribute, as appropriate, to the costs of rebuilding, Accordingly, consistent with the increased emphasis it has placed on the integrity of all Federal spending activities, the Administration proposes that controls be put in place to ensure that funds are used appropriately to protect against waste, fraud, and abuse.
If you want to really dig in, there’s an appendix specifying all the funding requests. About 1/4 of the request, $15 billion, will get routed through the Community Development Block Grant program, flowing directly to state and local governments to assist in recovery and mitigation needs. The states will be expected to contribute a small portion of funding toward these actions.
Importantly, the Budget Control Act, which capped discretionary spending, allows a safety valve for a certain amount of spending considered as disaster relief. The Administration wants $5.4 billion under those auspices, which doesn’t have to be offset by other spending. The other $55 billion, which the White House requests for FY2013, wants this designated as an “emergency requirement.” Basically none of the money would get an offset, under the President’s request.
I appreciate that “building for the future” part of the request, which comes to about $13 billion. It’s not worth it just to rebuild the coastline without putting in place concrete options to mitigate future storms, especially as these have become a more frequent occurrence in recent years. And the letter specifies funding to offset “impacts associated with a warming climate.” Like it or not, we’re in the mitigation stage of climate change right now, and expenditures today will be cheaper than tomorrow.
However, this request drops right in the middle of a gridlocked lame duck session where practically nothing has advanced, as well as in the middle of a debate over deficit reduction which particularly makes no sense in light of this rolling disaster on the East Coast. Residents in Lower Manhattan still don’t have phone or Internet service. Others in the Rockaways are still without power. Businesses remain shuttered. A handful of residences remain uninhabitable. Mortgage companies have not matched their promises on loan relief with actual obligations.
But regardless of Budget Control Act rules, Republicans are likely to ask for offsets for the spending, which would reduce the ability to use those offsets in a deficit deal, as well as make stimulus measures less likely. Though Sandy spending could serve as a type of stimulus through rebuilding, there are many broader-based things that could and should be done. The budget debate’s legacy ensures that will not happen in the near term.
Republican leaders have not specifically responded to this request, but all signs point toward another fight, with the victims on the East Coast bearing the suffering.
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No problem. Take the offsets out of the defense budget.
Dare they call it “handouts” for the 47%?
the one thing Dave Dayen continues to bring up that I think is wrong. Mitigation is a futile, and misleading. money and thinking need to be going into reduction and renewable energy.
how will you mitigate the following?
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/10/14/1009121/science-of-global-warming-impacts-guide/
“Staggeringly high temperature rise, especially over land — some 10°F over much of the United States
Permanent Dust Bowl conditions over the U.S. Southwest and many other regions around the globe that are heavily populated and/or heavily farmed.
Sea level rise of some 1 foot by 2050, then 4 to 6 feet (or more) by 2100, rising some 6 to 12 inches (or more) each decade thereafter
Massive species loss on land and sea — perhaps 50% or more of all biodiversity.
Unexpected impacts — the fearsome “unknown unknowns”
Much more extreme weather
Food insecurity — the increasing difficulty of feeding 7 billion, then 8 billion, and then 9 billion people in a world with an ever-worsening climate.
Myriad direct health impacts
spending money and time on “Mitigation” is an excuse that the oil and coal criminals would love to see happen.
It distracts attention from what really needs to be done.
Reality check; nothing is being done now and mitigation is a path to preparing and building a base of technologies and programs that will be desperately needed in the near future. The all of the above policy of our current President/Corporate lackey and science denying old fart billionaires who know they won’t be alive when the crisis becomes critical so there is a great deal of inertia from the PTB. Having mitigation policies could be setting the ground work for when the crisis becomes real enough (because Science isn’t for everyone) we will be able to do more quicker.
Here in SE Texas, we get a big hurricane about once every 15 years. some other areas of the Gulf quite more frequently.
I’ve seen several documentaries of the effects a major hurricane wouold have on the NJ/NY/CT coast. It was predicted that a storm like Sandy would likely occur once in 50-60 years. THere were any number of ideas floated (sorry for the pun) by the Army Corps of Engineers. All of them so costly that, even now, they will likely not be considered. I don’t want to seem callous, but if you live by the shore, you will die by the shore. Massive property damage is simply unavoidable.
Wasn’t a Sandy predicted in Gore’s Inconvenient Truth? I haven’t seen that in a long time but the science he based it on seems to be true. I think someone in Greenpeace or 350.org said the scientists biggest error was they under estimated the time frame all these calamitous events would happen.
As joe Romm has written, there is nowhere to move to.
for instance..
“As far back as 1990, scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies projected that severe to extreme drought in the United States, then happening every 20 years, could become an every-other-year phenomenon by mid-century
in October 2010, the National Center for Atmospheric Research published a complete literature review, “Drought under global warming: a review,” (See NCAR analysis warns we risk multiple, devastating global droughts even on moderate emissions path). That study (now updated) makes clear that Dust-Bowlification may be the most devastating impact of human-caused climate change.”
That would be your part of the world affected, by catastrophic drought every year or two.
There were just forest fire evacuations in Colorado mountains, last week. Forest fires, December, in the mountains of Colorado.
How do you adapt to that?
gonna miss Dave Dayen.
Add to that a Russian Tanker just went from Norway to Japan via the Northwest Passage (sea ice has melted so much Magellan could make it through now). Sell your Suez Canal stock cuz they will lose half their business at least.