A Heartless Way to Show Compassion : In exchange for quake aid, Congress cut billions from programs serving low-income people. We need equal burden sharing and a ‘rainy day fund.’

It took Congress only two weeks to pass $8.6 billion in emergency disaster relief after the Northridge earthquake. As with every emergency spending bill in the past, Congress was not required to cut programs that served the whole nation to pay for the catastrophe that occurred in Southern California.

Since the congressional district I represent suffered enormous damage in the earthquake, I was one of the leading advocates of the relief bill. I saw victims receive emergency care. My staff and I have worked for months helping people apply for assistance to rebuild their homes and lives.

Why then, having experienced such destruction and seeing the extent of the remaining damage, did I vote last week against the funds the Federal Emergency Management Agency now needs to cover costs that could not be predicted in those early days?

Just weeks ago, I couldn’t have imagined voting against a bill to repair earthquake damage to public schools, the UCLA medical center and a home for disabled children in the San Fernando Valley. But I also couldn’t have imagined that such a bill would pit our needs against those of the nation’s most vulnerable citizens.

The rules for emergency disaster assistance should not be changed retroactively.

By practice and by law, when a natural disaster occurs, the President waives the Budget Enforcement Act (which requires cuts to balance any new spending) and asks Congress to appropriate the emergency funds needed for help. This happened when the Midwest was flooded, when Hurricane Andrew hit Florida and in every other federally declared disaster in our past.

This process is written into the law precisely so that Congress would not have to cut existing programs to pay for the problems of one area of the country. Frankly, members of Congress are not so eager to pay for a region’s misfortune if it means the loss of valuable programs in their home districts.

If Congress is going to change the rules retroactively, however, and make offsetting cuts in other programs to pay for disaster assistance, then the cuts should be equal to the amount needed.

The Republicans last week used our suffering as a hook to cut programs--not dollar for dollar--but more than 3 for 1! They cut $17.1 billion to pay for $5.4 billion in emergency appropriations for disaster relief in California.

If Congress is going to change the rules retroactively and make offsetting cuts in other programs that are three times as great as needed for disaster relief, then those cuts should be spread among all government programs and among all recipients. They should be fair.

What was not cut by this bill? No agricultural subsidies were reduced. No corporate welfare was earmarked. No tax loopholes were closed. Not one dime was cut from the Pentagon or military construction. Not a single highway project was cut. In other words, no pork was touched.

Instead, the $17.1 billion in cuts attached to the earthquake relief funds are almost totally to be borne by low-income Americans, primarily children and the elderly. The cuts are focused on just a few selected areas of federal spending: housing, job training, education and health programs for veterans.

Numerous programs that improve the lives of children are reduced or eliminated. One hundred thousand mothers and babies were knocked out of the federal nutritional program for pregnant women and infants. Six hundred thousand summer jobs for low-income young people were terminated; 75,400 of those jobs are in California, and 11,800 are in Los Angeles. Student aid was wiped out for 250,000 students who are already counting on the funds to help them finance their college education next year.

Given the deficit and the frequency with which disasters are now occurring, federal disaster policy must be rethought.

We must always help our communities rebuild after national disasters. But disasters are not rare occurrences, and as we struggle to fund critical government programs and cut the deficit, we must take into account that the federal government has spent $33 billion for disaster relief in just the last five years.

What we need is a national form of disaster insurance or “rainy day fund” to spread the risk of catastrophes among all parts of the country and minimize the liability of the federal government. We cannot continue to fund disaster assistance without regard to the deficit, but we must deal with this serious problem before the next disaster, not in the middle of this one.