Congress Plays Games With Earthquake Aid to the Region : An emergency is an emergency--don’t try to rewrite the rules now

Last month, President Clinton called for an important $6.7-billion supplemental increase in the budget of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Although the lion’s share (73%) was rightfully earmarked for the nation’s most costly national disaster ever--the 1994 Northridge earthquake--there was much more to the proposal.

The money was to also cover 40 other national disaster areas across the country and in six U.S. territories. All but a few are older than the Northridge quake, some considerably so. When it comes to natural disasters, there is no such thing as a safe part of the United States. When you take away all of the areas that can suffer and have suffered earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, droughts, windstorms, wildfires, tornadoes, plagues of locusts and other such catastrophes, very little is left. Every region was covered in the FEMA request: the northern tier of states, the Southwest, the Deep South, the East Coast, the Midwest, the Pacific Northwest and New England.

Sure, Congress must consider ways to handle recovery from such events, such as mandating a general form of comprehensive disaster insurance for property owners. This worthy idea isn’t new. The problem has been a sorry lack of leadership in getting disaster insurance passed. That’s what the Congress ought to be spending more time on before the next big disaster. If there is to be a significant change, between major disasters is the proper time to apply new rules or institute new programs.

That’s why the Clinton Administration was correct in considering the request for FEMA as a dust mote on the federal deficit and as a necessity that should not require commensurate cuts in other federal programs.

However, offsetting cuts is exactly what House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.), House Budget Committee Chairman John R. Kasich (R-Ohio) and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston (R-La.) demanded. Those four are primarily responsible for giving Californians their second Northridge earthquake.

They pitted region against region, program against program, and left subcommittee chairman Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) with an unenviable task. He had to either propose cuts that would hurt some Californians in order to help others or sit idly by and see the FEMA request fail entirely.

So how much do Californians figure to gain from the smaller FEMA proposal of $5.36 billion that moved through the House Appropriations Committee last Thursday? Not as much as it would seem. A large part of the money for the FEMA aid would come from enormous reductions in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development programs. If the Congress adopts these offsets, in California there will be a loss of $329 million in federal rental-assistance subsidies for low-income people. The legislation would also mean the loss of thousands of affordable housing units from Bakersfield to Westminster and the loss of nearly $36 million in community-development block grants.

Poor and elderly Angelenos figure to lose $116 million in Section 8 rental assistance, and there would be a reduction of $18 million in housing and rent vouchers for homeless people and people suffering from AIDS. Angelenos would also lose more than $13 million in grants for the modernization of deteriorating public housing units, more than $3 million in public housing operating subsidies for maintenance and security, and still more money intended to help people end their reliance on public housing (now that really makes sense).

The full House still has to consider the FEMA compromise, and then the matter will be taken up by the Senate. Rep. Lewis vows that there will be enough aid to help Southern Californians fully recover from the quake. The shame and wrongheadedness surrounding this assistance come from burdening the nation’s least powerful constituents to achieve it.