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September 27th, 2011 12:33 pm
Communities, Not Congress, Fund Disaster Relief

The Heritage Foundation has a masterful indictment of Senator Harry Reid’s (D-NV) ham-handed attempt to use a FEMA budget bill to score political points.  Last week, Reid deliberately killed a House-passed continuing resolution funding FEMA for $3.5 billion while cutting $200 million in subsidies similar to the Solyndra loan fiasco.  Angry at the cuts, Reid sidelined the House bill and introduced his own with no cuts and more spending.

Yet when the Senate sensibly defeated Reid’s proposal, he chastised the chamber in a bizarre floor speech that tried to pin blame on Republicans for leaving disaster victims out in the cold.

Besides refusing responsibility for holding victims hostage so more green jobs could be subsidized, Reid’s implication was that without billions in taxpayer money, citizens would be left to fend for themselves.

As Heritage shows, Reid’s argument is simply not so.  With just a bit of calling around, the think tank found that disaster victims in Pennsylvania were being assisted by the Wyoming County United Way, the Seven Loaves Soup Kitchen and the Weinberg Regional Food Bank.  Each of these private voluntary groups reported record numbers of donations and applications to assist.

As with any disaster, everyday Americans don’t wait for the government to mobilize.  Instead, they roll up their sleeves, stuff sand bags, serve hot food and help the devastated rebuild their lives and communities.  For statists like Harry Reid, people die without the government.  For those living in the real world, it’s people – not bureaucracies – that make recovery possible.

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