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Trump’s
high rejection rate of disaster aid requests is indicative of a radical
libertarian view of the federal government, which Democrats know how to
skewer.
by Bill Scher
Last
week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) denied a request
from the state of Maryland for $15.8 million in disaster relief
following devastating floods two months ago in Allegany and Garrett
counties. Our expectations for impartial governance are so low that the
denial made news not just because the denial was inexplicable on the
merits but also because the electorates of the two rural Appalachian
counties supported Donald Trump by at least 40 points.
The mayor of Westernport, Maryland, told The Washington Post,
“Even though Maryland is a Democratic state, up here they’re not. They
voted red. And I think that’s where the frustration for the residents
is. Now they feel like the president has turned his back on them.”
Trump
had a reputation as a different Republican president: less libertarian,
more authoritarian, less interested in shrinking government or cutting
entitlements, more interested in using the levers of government to
reward friends and punish enemies.
But
Trump’s approach to FEMA in his second term belies that reputation. The
agency, created in 1979, is explicitly retreating from the disaster
relief business and shifting the burden to already overburdened states
and localities. The administration’s denial of funds to Maryland is just
the latest example.
In Trump’s first 100 days, FEMA turned down half of the requests it received for major disaster aid, including bomb-cyclone-hit Washington state, flood-drenched areas of West Virginia, and hurricane-struck North Carolina. (Arkansas’s aid request following deadly tornadoes was initially denied but later approved after lobbying by Trump’s former press secretary, now-Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and the daughter of Trump’s ambassador to Israel.)
Stateline,
in April, asked the Trump administration about the spate of denials. A
spokesman for the National Security Council, Brian Hughes, issued a
condescending statement, proclaiming that the “Federal Government
focuses its support on truly catastrophic disasters,” and chiding state
and local governments for “often” being “an impediment to their own
community’s resilience.”
Hughes
lectured states to secure “adequate emergency management staff,
adoption and enforcement of modern building codes, responsible planning
and strategic investment to reduce future risk, commonsense policies
that prioritize preparedness over politics, disaster reserve funds to
handle what should be routine emergencies, pre-negotiated mutual aid and
contingency contracts that speed up recovery, and above all, an
appetite to own the problem.”
Similarly,
when Maryland’s request was denied last week, Abigail Jackson, a White
House spokesperson, passive-aggressively scolded, “The President
responds to each request for Federal assistance ... with great care and
consideration, ensuring American tax dollars are used appropriately and
efficiently by the states to supplement—not substitute, their obligation
to respond to and recover from disasters.”
Passing
the buck downward shifts the burden of emergency spending on
governments with the least fiscal latitude. Unlike the federal
government, state and local governments can’t print money, must operate
on balanced budgets, and are losing revenue because of the disasters at
hand.
Two months ago, the Maryland Governor Wes Moore and the state legislature completed “the most challenging” budget process of the last 15 years, according to the state Senate president.
Faced with a structural, growing budget deficit—on top of uncertainty
with federal funding—state officials cut spending, raised taxes and
fees, delayed hiring, and shifted costs onto localities to achieve
balance. Small towns have even less wiggle room. Westernport has an annual budget of $2 million, and is now staring down $10 million in flood damages.
But Maryland is not unusual. California Governor Gavin Newsom, earlier this month, told ProPublica
that his state “can’t backfill the elimination of FEMA. There’s no
state in America [that can], even the most endowed state—$4.1 trillion a
year economy—largest in the nation, fourth largest in the world.”
Republican presidents have long had a negative attitude about FEMA, which, six years ago, I chronicled for Real Clear Politics. Both
George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush picked FEMA directors who lacked
disaster management experience and were heavily criticized for
mishandling hurricane responses. The younger Bush began his first term
with a push to partially privatize FEMA. though he course-corrected after
the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina early in his second
term. Legislation was enacted to strengthen FEMA, and a new head of the
agency was installed who was more experienced and filled many critical
positions that had been left vacant. [See also, “Democrats are Better at Running FEMA. They Just Are,” by Matthew Cooper in the Washington Monthly, September 3, 2021.]
In
his second term, Trump has taken Republican FEMA-hatred to its
illogical endpoint: elimination. Last month, during a briefing about
California wildfires, Trump said,
“We want to wean off of FEMA. And we want to bring it down to the state
level. A little bit like education. We're moving it back to the states,
so the governors can handle it. That's why they're governors. Now, if
they can't handle it, they shouldn't be governor.”
Trump means it. The administration’s denial of aid requests and its weak rationales prove it.
This is madness. Governors are not able to handle disasters without federal help.
Trump’s
war on FEMA is not happening in a vacuum. Medicaid cuts in the recent
budget reconciliation bill will hit state health programs hard, albeit not until after the midterms. But Trump already slashed public health grants to state health departments, compromising infectious disease monitoring, mental health programs, and addiction treatment.
Trump says his go-local FEMA strategy is “a little bit like education.” Last week, Trump’s Education Department—which is facing mass layoffs and threats of elimination—paused the disbursement of nearly $7 billion in funding for kindergarten-through-12th-grade schools.
Granted, he soon released
the funds under pressure from panicked school districts in red states
as much as blue ones. But it’s another reminder of the radical
libertarian direction Trump, in his second term, wants to take the
federal government—leaving cash-strapped states and cities without help
to provide essential services. And that means either fewer services or
more regressive taxation at the state and local level, where real pain
will be felt.
This opens a wide political door for Democrats who know how to make this argument.
Set
aside the debates about rebranding or the “abundance” movement. Forget
about throwing transgender people under the bus. As Trump reveals
himself to be little more than the worst possible version of a Grover
Norquist Republican—the kind who wants to “reduce [the federal government] to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub,” Democrats can get back to their 20th century roots as the party that believes in active, effective federal government.
Republicans
paint “big government” as a clumsy, meddling, even malevolent, force.
But many voters will soon see how a decimated Washington suffocates
state and municipal governments, and how that harshly affects their
lives, their neighbors, and the foundations of their communities:
schools, infrastructure, public safety, and public health. In response,
Democrats should proudly promote a federal government that uses
progressive taxation to aid cash-strapped states and relieve
municipalities heavily dependent on regressive property taxes, directly
affecting homeowners and indirectly affecting renters. Only the federal
government can alleviate these burdens in the fairest manner possible.
You could call it the New Federalism and reclaim the phrase from its
cynical use by conservatives.
Democrats
were once flummoxed by an ideologically heterodox Trumpism that
borrowed their talking points on retirement security, infrastructure
investment, and helping the working class. That Trumpism has proven to
be a sham. Trump is governing in the libertarian manner that Paul Ryan,
the former Speaker of the House and vice-presidential candidate,
championed (except for high tariffs). For years, this federal
retrenchment provided Democrats with a target-rich environment. The
party should be confident that the environment is richer than ever.
Bill Scher is the Politics Editor of the Washington Monthly |