HURRICANES FEMA & CITIES
What do hurricanes, FEMA, and your local government have in
common? Your federal tax money, what else. Not knowing the actual
dollar figures spent on our Mississippi Gulf Coast recovery efforts since
Hurricane Katrina and continuing, a guess would put that figure in the
hundreds of millions of taxpayer money. Money spent on new city halls,
state of the art new harbor facilities, storm and drainage systems, etc,
hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been and will continue to
flow to local governmental entities to assist in their continued recovery
effort.
When you drive down Highway-90, and into D’Iberville and see the
obvious improvements at all of the small craft harbors in each city and
view the massive water and storm drainage systems that will occur as a
result of FEMA Money, it should make you feel good that you may own
some of those repairs as your Federal Tax Dollars are at work, locally. I
am sure that you do not get a “warm and fuzzy feeling” from knowing
the preceding fact, but at least your local officials can say that “they did
all of this with FEMA GRANTS”….. Now I know that you feel better
because most, if not all of the money does not have to be paid back to
the Federal Government, because you and I have been very generous in
paying our taxes and FEMA has rerouted our money back to us in
Grants.
Fast-forward to Washington in 2014. Senators and Representatives
from other areas of the United States in Washington do not call up our
local officials and ask what they can do to send those hundreds of
millions of dollars to Mississippi to aid in recovery. It is our Senators
Thad Cochran, Roger Wicker, and Representative Steven Palazzo who
“continually fight’ to get FEMA Money channeled to our recovery
needs; otherwise, OUR TAXPAYER DOLLARS would be sent to New
York, California, etc, and yes you can bet those hundreds of millions of
improvements would not take place or you and I would have to be taxed
heavily at the local level.
Yes, we can cut Trillions of dollars in foreign aid to our enemies,
without jeopardizing and fulfilling the needs of our local communities.
Bob Usey can be reached at bob@bobusey.com © “Copyright”, 2014, Bob
Usey