How Project 2025 Will Gut Federal Disaster Response
Because if they deny climate change, of course they don't need to fund cleanup of the disasters it causes. (Scroll to the end to listen.)
What is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)?
FEMA is the lead federal agency in preparing for and responding to disasters, but it is overtasked, overcompensates for the lack of state and local preparedness and response, and is regularly in deep debt. After passage of the 1988 Stafford Act, the number of declared federal disasters rose dramatically as most disaster costs were shifted from states and local governments to the federal government. Reform of FEMA requires a greater emphasis on federalism and state and local preparedness, leaving FEMA to focus on large, widespread disasters.
Project 2025, page 153
I don’t know how many readers have lived through a natural disaster. My first big experience with one was Hurricane Hugo, September 1989. Every South Carolinian who was there has Hugo stories. I won’t bore readers with mine.
My point? Natural disasters impact survivors. We can call up that horror for life.
Natural disasters of all kinds cause power outages, water contamination, flash floods, projectiles, downed trees and power lines, fires and more, not to mention loss of life and property. Note this statistic from NPR:
Climate change has helped drive a fivefold increase in the number of weather-related disasters in the last 50 years.
So when Project 2025 claims the number of declared federal disasters rose dramatically, we can believe them.
Many Americans who’ve experienced a FEMA-directed disaster response wouldn’t say nice things. They can be sluggish, tone-deaf and disorganized. Distribution of support can be painfully slow. This is a specific example of the framers of Project 2025 using sentiments even some liberals might agree with to bury outrageous recommendations.
With a fivefold rise in climate-related disasters, this is what Christo-fascist Republicans give us: Reform of FEMA requires a greater emphasis on federalism and state and local preparedness.
Translated, this means states and localities impacted by natural disasters will fund the cleanup themselves. The only way states and localities will be able to pay for their own upkeep will be to raise taxes on residents precipitously.
I live in coastal South Carolina. My conservative neighbors across the river screech about paying taxes, bemoan their home and flood insurance costs, and bitch about FEMA’s ineptness. Yet most of them will vote for a government that will force them to pay more for disaster preparedness and cleanup while either raising their insurance costs or making it impossible to insure their properties.
Given this Project 2025 language, my money is on properties becoming impossible to insure. “Private insurance” chooses markets based on profit and avoidance of risk. They are free to leave markets when they lose money or don’t like the risk.
FEMA is also responsible for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), nearly all of which is issued by the federal government. Washington provides insurance at prices lower than the actuarially fair rate, thereby subsidizing flood insurance. Then, when flood costs exceed NFIP’s revenue, FEMA seeks taxpayer-funded bailouts. Current NFIP debt is $20.5 billion, and in 2017, Congress canceled $16 billion in debt when FEMA reached its borrowing authority limit. These subsidies and bailouts only encourage more development in flood zones, increasing the potential losses to both NFIP and the taxpayer. The NFIP should be wound down and replaced with private insurance starting with the least risky areas currently identified by the program.
Project 2025, pages 153 - 154
Like most reforms Republicans make, “least risky areas” would be impoverished hollers in Kentucky and West Virginia. It would be Black communities in rural Louisiana and Mississippi. They choose people and places they think no one cares about first and hope we won’t pay attention.
Red-state South Carolinians (and Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, etc.) completely deserve that Project 2025 medicine. But our children and grandchildren don’t deserve those consequences. Neither do the poor and marginalized people living in our midst.
Of course, Christo-fascist Republicans could choose to withhold federal disaster relief from blue states. We’ll cover that option in a future newsletter.
I'd be fine if the government stopped giving FEMA money to Florida....Ron can cover the cost himself since he politicizes everything already. He can raise taxes so Floridians can truly see the harm Republicans cause. He already rejected $320M from feds to clean up air and reduce emissions.
Yeah I think multiple areas in Florida can't get insurance because no company wants the risk.