FEMA Encourages a “Show Me the Money!” Mentality

Matt Mayer / September 30, 2009

“Show me the money!” is one of the most memorable lines from a movie—Jerry Maguire—in the last twenty years. Coincidentally, that movie came out in 1996, which was a reelection year for President Bill Clinton. Not coincidentally, President Clinton in fact showed them the money in 1996 when the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) issued more disaster declarations—157—than any year before or after. In “States: Stop Subsidizing FEMA Waste and Manage Your Own Local Disasters,” we detail the tendency over the last sixteen years to define disaster down so that the vast majority of FEMA declarations fail to meet the Stafford Act requirement of severity and magnitude. It is all about the money.

Specifically, with the FEMA declaration comes federal funds to pay for at least 75% of the costs of the disaster. When many of these disasters are of the scale that states and localities historically had handled without federal involvement for the first 205 years of America’s history, it means that most states (29) subsidize the majority of disasters declarations that get approved in a minority of states (21). We need to return to the pre-nationalization of disasters era when each state took care of itself and we reserved federal funds and assets for nationally catastrophic disasters. (more…)