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1 September 2011
Congresswoman Nan Hayworth has come under fire for doubling down her support for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's assertion, that federal disaster relief for Hurricane Irene should be conditioned on offsetting budget cuts. In a recent facebook wall posting she responded by likening congress to a frugal family:
"When we think about Irene," she writes, "we will mobilize the funding for disaster relief from less-essential spending, just the way American families do when they have to prioritize."
There are three things wrong with Hayworth's remarks: they are insensitively timed, they employ a very weak analogy, and finally, they depend on numbers that simply don't add up. New Yorkers are hurting and they need help, its inappropriate for a politician to exploit the crisis to trumpet her Tea Party styled austerity. Moreover, her comparing the country to a family doesn't make sense, and, even if it did, there simply aren't enough quarters in the jar to help us weather this storm.
On Facebook, Hayworth claimed that she was the first to ask the president for federal disaster relief funding. The fact is, her letter was submitted nearly a week after her colleagues in the senate, Chuck Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand had done so. Moreover, throughout the aftermath of Irene, the freshman congresswoman has gone about her routine public-appearance schedule-dropping by for photo-ops at Hudson Valley Hospital Center and speaking at the Rotary Club.
If Nan is seriously concerned about storm damage than that sentiment hasn't interfered with her calendar engagements. And while she hasn't demonstrated very much initiative in helping plan recovery, she has hardly lost an opportunity to use Irene as a way to tout her deficit reduction policies-she's made three statements in four days. When hundreds are without homes, thousands are without power, and businesses have lost incalculable amounts of revenues, it seems a tad insensitive to piggyback politics on tragedy.
The philosophy that Hayworth has been showcasing is that, "The federal government has to balance its budget the way our families do." But does this analogy really work? When individual households experience crises of this magnitude they depend on their community, their civic and cultural leaders to help them overcome hardship. Also, the Eastern Seaboard suffered a catastrophic natural disaster that was in part precipitated by its geography and climate. While an individual homeowner has the ability to relocate to reduce risk, a nation does not have that option and must invest in infrastructure and research in order to prepare for the next event. The family-country comparison is clumsy at best.
On her Facebook page, Hayworth exclaims: "We have a responsibility to the people and communities who are suffering after natural disaster... We also have a responsibility to provide that help without making things worse. We can, absolutely, do both."
This is not apparently the case. Damage assessment estimates that Irene will cost our state $1 billion and our country $7 billion. As it stands, the President's Disaster Relief Fund has only $800 million available, which means that it alone will not be able to finance the recovery. The money will need to come from elsewhere.
Congresswoman Hayworth says that the cash cow will be non-military discretionary funding in the federal budget. So, while sewage overflows in the town of New Windsor and Port Jervis remains indefinitely disconnected from the Metro North, she insists that a lengthy, and potentially inconclusive debate should begin over which government programs to divest in order to pay for recovery. Unsurprisingly, as a result, her ideas are not popular even among Republican town administrators; Exacerbated, New Winsor Mayor George Green, for example, shot back at her: "Don't tell me that you have to take money from another part of the budget to balance out FEMA money... people... lost their goddamn houses."
Although Hurricane Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm, the human cost is utterly heartbreaking. In Orange County, for example, government infrastructure has been shut down, Wallkill, a town of twenty thousand, not only has lost access to potable water, but because it has prohibited non-essential travel it is effectively under curfew.
The military terminology is strangely appropriate, as the storm has in many ways likened New York to a war zone. Indeed, in the north-central town of Schoharie, Governor Cuomo has deployed the 719th Transportation Company of the Army National Guard to help rescue stranded and trapped home-owners.
All things considered, given her audacity, confused comparisons, and bad math, does anyone want Congresswoman Hayworth in their foxhole, let alone marshalling her district's recovery?
Ishan Banerjee
Cortlandt Manor |
