An Argument Against FEMA: In 5 minutes

We need to end FEMA.

Romney is spineless and used to be against it, now when it is politically expedient for him to support it because of Sandy guess what he's doing? He's now supporting FEMA.

FEMA is robbing Peter to pay Paul: we are borrowing the money from China or printing the money to fund FEMA. Before President Carter there was no FEMA and our fellow Americans donated on their own good will to natural disaster relief. Now the government steps in and you can argue that the American people donate less to disaster relief then they otherwise would have absent the intrusion of government.

If only President Obama could take a page from another embattled Democratic president facing a drought-stricken nation: In 1887, Grover Cleveland vetoed a bill appropriating $10,000 for seeds for suffering Texas farmers, saying, “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution.”  Rather that just veto the spending bill, President Cleveland made certain that the major national newspapers reported to their readers the plight of the Texas farmers. Within weeks, private donations that exceeded $100,000 were sent to a fund established for relief of the drought stricken farmers. That is TEN TIMES the amount that Congress wanted to appropriate! Government intervention or the goodness of American citizens - we need to begin asking ourselves, which is better?

Ending certain Federal agencies including FEMA needs to be the REAL debate. The gov't causes moral hazard when they give $$ to people who build their homes in disaster-prone / flood-prone areas. This is what FEMA did with Katrina (probably less extent for Sandy).  And the gov't subsidizes flood insurance for those living in flood-prone areas this also needs to end. People argue that everyone has a right to live in a flood-stricken area.  I argue No it is not the right for someone to live in a flood-prone area.  However by the government giving money to those whose home is destroyed after a natural disaster, and giving subsidies for flood insurance for those living in a flood-prone area, this is what the government encourages.

Our Constitution gives no authority for the government to create / have created FEMA.  It was and still is a mechanism for government to buy the votes of the people by becoming Santa Clause in the times of natural disaster.  On the Constitutional basis alone the agency should be ended, but the moral hazards I describe also are good reasons to end it.