{"id":11439,"date":"2011-09-27T12:33:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-27T16:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=11439"},"modified":"2011-09-27T12:33:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-27T16:33:00","slug":"communities-not-congress-fund-disaster-relief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/11439\/communities-not-congress-fund-disaster-relief\/","title":{"rendered":"Communities, Not Congress, Fund Disaster Relief"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <em>Heritage Foundation<\/em> has a <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2011\/09\/27\/morning-bell-how-harry-reid-manufactured-a-crisis-over-disaster-aid\/\" target=\"_blank\">masterful indictment of Senator Harry Reid<\/a>\u2019s (D-NV) ham-handed attempt to use a FEMA budget bill to score political points.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Angry at the cuts, Reid sidelined the House bill and introduced his own with no cuts and more spending.<\/p>\n<p>Yet when the Senate sensibly defeated Reid\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>Besides refusing responsibility for holding victims hostage so more green jobs could be subsidized, Reid\u2019s implication was that without billions in taxpayer money, citizens would be left to fend for themselves.<\/p>\n<p>As <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2011\/09\/27\/morning-bell-how-harry-reid-manufactured-a-crisis-over-disaster-aid\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Heritage<\/em> shows<\/a>, Reid\u2019s argument is simply not so.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Each of these private voluntary groups reported record numbers of donations and applications to assist.<\/p>\n<p>As with any disaster, everyday Americans don\u2019t wait for the government to mobilize.\u00a0 Instead, they roll up their sleeves, stuff sand bags, serve hot food and help the devastated rebuild their lives and communities.\u00a0 For statists like Harry Reid, people die without the government.\u00a0 For those living in the real world, it\u2019s people \u2013 not bureaucracies \u2013 that make recovery possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Heritage Foundation has a masterful indictment of Senator Harry Reid\u2019s (D-NV) ham-handed attempt to use a FEMA budget bill to score political points.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Angry at the cuts, Reid [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[70,2472,390,56,77,3071,61],"class_list":["post-11439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-budget","tag-disaster","tag-fema","tag-government","tag-harry-reid","tag-relief","tag-spending"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11439"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11444,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11439\/revisions\/11444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}