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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (135375)	8/30/2005 5:34:56 PM
From: DMaA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793570

FEMA [and anything Congress has a mind to do] can easily be justified under the General Welfare, Necessary and Proper, and Commerce

To: D. Long who wrote (135375)	8/30/2005 5:56:46 PM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793570

you can easily argue just about every aspect of human life and capital expenditure is justified und the 'general welfare' clause, cradle to grave federal spending for the 'general welfare' but the fact is that we are subsidizing, taking money out of the pocket of one taxpayer to put it in the hand of another, relieving people of the necessity of making rational choices about where they live foxnews.com Head to Head: Who Should Pay for Hurricane Clean Up? Neil Cavuto: Charley, Frances, Ivan and maybe more behind them. Huge deadly storms costing billions of dollars in damage. But should it be U.S. taxpayers paying the tab to clean up the mess? Jack Chambless, an economics professor at Valencia Community College in Orlando, says stop the government handouts now. Jack Chambless: Absolutely. Americans have a moral obligation to take care of their fellow man through charities. But it's morally and economically wrong for the United States government to plunder tax payers, many of whom are poor, just to have their money go to the relatively wealthy to rebuild their homes or coastal areas over and over again. Neil Cavuto: But many of them are not wealthy people. Jack Chambless: That's true. But going to taxpayers in Indiana and saying 'You must pay for the decisions someone made in Florida. And we won't guarantee that we won't rebuild after the storm.' That doesn't seem to be morally right either. Private charities absolutely. But taxpayer's money doesn't seem to make any sense. FEMA has lowered the cost of living in these areas. More and more people are going to move into these areas because they're given no incentive to leave. Neil Cavuto: But would you provide the same guidelines to those who live in tornado passage ways or those who live in earthquake areas or those who live where there are a lot of forest fires? Where do you draw the line? Jack Chambless: Sure I'm a native of Oklahoma and we have tornadoes. There's virtually no place in America that doesn't get hit with snowstorms or earthquakes. That's why it makes no sense to have FEMA bailing out these areas over and over again. Neil Cavuto: I would like to believe professor that Americans are generous. But often times is not enough to compensate people via charities. So don't we need some sort of government entity to fall back on? Jack Chambless: I don't think so. The American people give over $200 billion a year to charity, which is more than the gross domestic product of some western European nations. We have more than enough money through charity to take care of all this. We're having people live in these areas on government checks. And in some cases, like in Louisiana in the late '90's, we had people rebuilding six or seven times and getting more money from FEMA than their houses were actually worth