The Fiscal Times: Edward Morrissey- 'Shame on Congress for Robbing Hurricane Sandy Victims'

Source:The Fiscal Times- Hurricane Sandy survivors.

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste.  That quote from Rahm Emanuel came during the dark days of the 2008 financial collapse, when Democrats wanted to make sure that the Congressional intervention of TARP carried with it plenty of “opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.” 

From The Fiscal Times

Bad news for people on the Left and people on the Right who believe in limited government and fiscal responsibility, for a couple of reasons.

One, Senator Barbara Mikulski will become the next Chairman of the Appropriations Committee in the next Congress. She is a major porker and one of the members of Congress who have a habit of attaching non-relevant spending to appropriations bills. And I imagine she'll have some non-relevant amendments to the Sandy disaster relief bills.

Two, the other one being that Senator Milkulski's colleagues in Congress will be doing the same thing to the Hurricane Sandy disaster relief bills as well. We are running up run away debt and deficits and Congress is just adding to the problems by borrowing more money from other countries to fund their pet projects. 

Congress is the only reason why even disaster relief bills need to be paid for even if that means coming up with a national fund to finance disaster relief like a so-called trust fund. And getting non relevant amendments off of appropriations bills.

Disaster relief like another else the U.S. Government does including defense and military operations that involve helping our so-called allies and victims of civil war in other countries, should be paid for upfront. 

What Congress (both in the Senate and House does) is say: "We'll pay for this spending down the road. But what we need to do is get this money out the door as fast as possible, instead of arguing for how it should be paid for." But they don't even do that. They borrow the money upfront and then move onto other priorities. Which generally involves more borrowing. And Americans who at least care about our deficit and national debt, are left to wonder why we run up big deficits and add to out national debt every year.