Most Americans have never heard of the National Response Coordination
Center, but they’re lucky it exists on days of lethal winds and flood
tides. The center is the war room of the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
where officials gather to decide where rescuers should go, where
drinking water should be shipped, and how to assist hospitals that have
to evacuate.
Disaster coordination is one of the most vital functions of “big
government,” which is why Mitt Romney wants to eliminate it. At a
Republican primary debate last year, Mr. Romney was asked whether
emergency management was a function that should be returned to the
states. He not only agreed, he went further.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Every time you have an occasion to take
something from the federal government and send it back to the states,
that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it
back to the private sector, that’s even better.” Mr. Romney not only
believes that states acting independently can handle the response to a
vast East Coast storm better than Washington, but that profit-making
companies can do an even better job. He said it was “immoral” for the
federal government to do all these things if it means increasing the debt.
It’s an absurd notion, but it’s fully in line with decades of Republican
resistance to federal emergency planning. FEMA, created by President
Jimmy Carter, was elevated to cabinet rank in the Bill Clinton
administration, but was then demoted by President George W. Bush, who
neglected it, subsumed it into the Department of Homeland Security, and
placed it in the control of political hacks. The disaster of Hurricane
Katrina was just waiting to happen.
The agency was put back in working order by President Obama, but
ideology still blinds Republicans to its value. Many don’t like the idea
of free aid for poor people, or they think people should pay for their
bad decisions, which this week includes living on the East Coast...
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