Flood Relief: a Hand, Not a Handout : Communities that chose not to protect themselves should be left to sink or swim.

The people along the flooding Mississippi River need our help. But let’s give them the right kind of help, so we don’t have the same problem in a few years. And let’s make poor people part of the solution. Two ideas:

First, let’s stop blank-checking the risks that middle-class and rich Americans choose to take by living along unprotected riverbanks and flood plains.

Second, let’s hire inner-city teen-agers to help with the devastation and prevent future damage.

Right now, the Clinton Administration has one goal: to plug further leaks in its political support with wads of federal cash. Who can blame them? The Democrats delighted in the erosion of George Bush’s standing when he seemed slow to respond to Hurricane Andrew. Their imperative is to make everyone happy, or at least to make sure that no unhappy person gets on TV and blames them.

On “Meet the Press” last Sunday, NBC’s Tim Russert told Vice President Gore that Midwesterners don’t want loans, they want grants. In his best Buster Keaton deadpan, Gore agreed: “Farmers often find, in the wake of disasters, that loans are a mixed blessing. They help in the short term, but they leave a residue of debt . . . . And some farmers find that difficult to deal with.”

The vice president hit the nail on the head. The problem with borrowing money is that you have to pay it back. Unless, of course, you borrow from the government. Then pandering politicians will let you off the hook.

We all worry about the dependency that free money instills in the poor. Today, the same debilitation is spreading to the middle and upper classes as we all learn that the squeakiest wheel gets the pork.

The federal government has long offered subsidized insurance, but few people buy it. According to the Cato Institute’s Sheldon Richman, just one-third of eligible acres are covered by federal crop insurance and just one-eighth of non-agricultural property is covered by flood insurance. Why? Because people have learned that when disasters are declared, the feds write checks to everyone, whether they bought the insurance or not. That has to stop. We should move toward market-rate insurance, not because we’re mean, but because risk assessment is the key to wise decision-making. If smokers should pay higher premiums for health insurance, and if teen-age drivers should pay more for car insurance, then the same logic should apply to property owners.

Entitlement thinking is killing self-reliance. For example, the Iowa towns of Bettendorf and Davenport are just five miles apart along the Mississippi. The difference is that Bettendorf built levees and suffered minimal flood damage, while Davenport chose not to and is inundated. Our hearts go out to the victims, but our heads tell us that we can’t subsidize such shortsightedness. Let’s bail out these people one last time. After that, future aid should consist of flood prevention.

Which brings us to the second reform. Flood control is labor-intensive. Everyone from Little Leaguers to prison inmates is pitching in. What about inner-city kids? Isn’t this a mission for President Clinton’s national-service program? When last heard from, the White House was finishing up a financial-aid plan for college students. Sounds nice, but such yuppie-subsidizing misses the real need.

There was a time when the federal government focused on people down on their luck and helped them regain their work ethic as well as their physical well-being. In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps hired 3 million unemployed men, giving them discipline, training and three square meals a day. In return, CCC workers planted trees, built roads and constructed more than 50,000 flood-control projects.

The American people are rightfully skeptical of Great Society-style jobs programs that all too often “hire” kids to sit around and watch TV. F.D.R had a better idea, and today’s Democrats ought to get hip to it.

If Clinton is serious about reinventing effective government, he’d call Gen. Colin Powell and tell him that he’s now in charge of the new CCC. Use drill sergeants who would otherwise be laid off and military bases that would otherwise be shut down and pay for it with money that would otherwise be wasted on NATO. (If it can’t help the Bosnians, then what good is it?) Then Clinton could ask Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal to help get the message out: Uncle Sam needs the Boyz N The Hood to join the new CCC, and help themselves by helping their fellow Americans.