On August 8, President Barack Obama’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) issued a disaster declaration for flooding in Utah. With that declaration, FEMA hit 158 declarations in 2011 and in so doing surpassed the 15-year record of 157 declarations, set in 1996 by President Bill Clinton’s FEMA, led by James Lee Witt. At this pace, FEMA will end the year with roughly 288 declarations, or almost twice the previous record.
When FEMA issues a declaration, costs shift from the state where the declaration occurred to the federal government—which really means the states where the disaster did not occur are paying for it.
During his term, President Obama’s FEMA has issued 375 declarations, or one declaration every 2.48 days. As a reference point, in just over 2.5 years, President Obama’s FEMA has issued more declarations than President Dwight Eisenhower’s in two terms (106), President Richard Nixon’s in two terms (212), and President Ronald Reagan’s in two terms (225). Obama’s yearly average now stands at almost 150 declarations per year, which is more than 20 declarations more per year than President George W. Bush had and more than 1.5 times more than Clinton averaged in his two terms. President Obama’s FEMA has issued more declarations at this point in his presidency than any other president in U.S. history.
Keep in mind: During Obama’s time in office, not one hurricane has struck the United States, and not one earthquake of a 7 or higher reading on the Richter scale has occurred. As we have pointed out many times, the U.S. is federalizing more and more natural disasters that were handled by states and localities from 1787 to 1992. The federalization trend since 1993 gets larger with each presidential Administration.
This trend must end.
Obama is obviously trying to rein in state's rights by using "disasters" as a guise to implement federal control.
And according to an article in the American Spectator, this flooding is planned by bureaucrats who have changed the mandate of their agency from one of protecting citizens to one of mimicking nature. Thus they release water from dams just when the rains and snow melt are at their worst! So one Fed agency creates a disaster and another embraces it as the taxpayers responsibility to fix. God help us!
Good article — certainly reflects the coma federalism finds itself in.
**When FEMA issues a declaration, costs shift from the state where the declaration occurred to the federal government—which really means the states where the disaster did not occur are paying for it.**
Taxpayers from all 50 states pay Federal Income Taxes. The states that have declared disasters, actually pay toward that paticular disaster also (sometimes up tp 25%), therefore they pay more, … which is the way it should be.
Interesting. Makes sense if your viewpoint is that the federal government is good and should be responsible for taking care of people.
Just another issue where federal spending is running amok.
Clearly not an attempt to rein in state's right by using diasters…that statement is very political. Please do a little more homework as to why these declarations are being made, the criteria that is being used. It has NOTHING to do with trying to implement federal control as these states welcome the assistance!!!!
Yeah . . and not one meteor of any size greater than a football field has hit the US and not one 300 ft. shark has menaced our shorelines . . What an absolutely ridiculous article . . Clearly the number questionable disasters goes up if you're looking for every possible reason to demonize this president. I wonder how many times George Washington and Thomas Jefferson declared the equivalent of FEMA in their era.
Her R Waite, Matt Mayer here. I hate to break it to you, but your math just doesn't work. Without a FEMA declaration, a state is 100% responsible for the cost of the disaster. With a FEMA declaration, the federal government pays 75% or more of the costs of the disaster. Therefore, the state's portion goes DOWN from 100% to 25% or less. This cost shift is precisely why states clamor for a FEMA declaration. I wrote a previous report that shows that a majority of states are net losers in this system because they pay a lot into the federal government due to their large populations but get little back because they get few FEMA declarations. Check it out at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/09/…
Forgive me if my numbers are incorrect, but did you just blatantly lie? http://www.fema.gov/news/disaster_totals_annual.f…
For the sake of accuracy: The Easter earthquake was a 7.2 on 4-4-10. http://blogdowntown.com/2010/04/5237-easter-earth…