Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal Stephen Ellis Discu

Figure out how much money is needed for houston and louisiana . Stephen like they talk about with a fog of war, there is a fog of disaster. Immediately the efforts are about First Responders and getting people out of harms way. And then as you start to move into recovery it is hard to know , exactly what the needs are. You want to start slowly in some respects. In that you need to open up this spicket ofcash cash. You want to make sure that money is being spent wisely and appropriately. Initially it is going to be a lot of debris removal. Things just have to be taken away. Then trying to figure out what can be saved, what has to be torn down, what is where are the places that you should not rebuild and invest. It is going to take time. It is a long process. Host we know the Trump Administration is going to ask initially for 6 billion. How did they arrive at the number . Stephen it is hard. What i read was 5. 9 billion, not even quite 6 billion. Host i rounded up. Stephen i understand. We want to sound more precise. There is no way they know they need exactly 5. 9 billion. For some reason someone shows decided that that was better than 6 billion. I dont know why. Some of it is because there is a separate account fema has access to called the Disaster Relief fund. That funds the initial disaster efforts so that congress does not have to quickly appropriate additional money to fema. So this is we are at the end of the fiscal year. It was only down to about 2 billion, hard to say exactly how much, so they wanted to make sure they had enough money continued Disaster Relief money and then bridge as they make a reasoned decision on what the level of funding should be. Host we are talking about numbers in the billions of dollars. Take a look at the screen. This is Disaster Relief from hurricanes past. 2005, 45 billion went to Hurricane Katrina and rita. 2005o Hurricane Katrina and rita. 2012was 13 billion, and hurricane sandy, 18 billion spent on that effort. How does that inform lawmakers as they move forward . Guest some of it is you have to figure out what is the total amount. In 2005 with katrina, you had initial chunks of change billions of dollars approved for katrina. Katrina continued to receive spendingrelief five years after the disaster occurred. It is hard to compare these type of disasters. Im not sure it is fair to the victims to do that. People were talking about the size and scope of harvey, and you have around 50 individuals that lost their lives. In katrina, 1300 people lost their lives. It is hard to put a sense of all that. I dont want to put dollars and cents on some of the impact, not just of people that lost their life, but people that have their livelihood destroyed or savings gone. As you go into the federal funding, looking at katrina, in the end, the government spent hundreds of billions of dollars in response to katrina. Sandy is about 60 billion. 50 billion. Host is there a mechanism for oversight . Looking at these numbers, it sounds like the government is printing money. Clearly people need relief, but is there oversight . Guest that is a great question. Is actually ad hoc disaster by disaster. After katrina, initial concerns about the Disaster Response, the fema director was dismissed. General for the department of Homeland Security, which fema is part of, became kind of the king Inspector General that marshall all of the efforts. Inspector generals are independent entities within Government Agencies that do not respond to the secretary of Homeland Security that are there to make sure the money is being spent wisely all the time, not just during disaster. I believe his name was skinner. Main ringleader that marshalled the forces. On sandy a came on the heels of the recovery act. There was a recovery act transparency board that are really existed that was tracking all the money. Congress said before you all leave, we will extend your tenure, and can you watch out sandy spending as well . Something we will call for in any Disaster Recovery money is that on light in the recovery in thethat unlike recovery act, the money doesnt need to be tagged as sandy money. Agencies did not attack the tag the money as sandy money, which makes it hard to track. You had a very convoluted way of tracking it. I can say that because we tried to track it as well. We even talked to the rap board at the time, and they threw up their hands. Is not hundreds of billions of dollars, you dont want to set up a separate office. You want to make sure they are able to follow that money all the way down to the state and municipal level. Host funding for sandy eight was in the news again because aid was in the news again because senator ted cruz years ago voted against the aid as did a number of the members of the texas delegation. What do you think about that . Guest people can go back and look at our website. We looked at sandy, and since our inception in 1995 have looked at Flood Insurance and disaster spending. We closely examined sandy at the time. What we said verbatim was there is some funding in here that is not emergency that should be meted out over time rather than a large chunk of money. Also some of the money was going to federal agencies to make the em whole from whatever damages. Buying ance, we were couple of new cars for the department of treasury Inspector Generals office while in reality the department of judiciary has a fleet of 40,000 vehicles. They couldve obviously not retired a few or transfer them around. We had problems with the way things were done. Billion, and 6 additional money in the future, we have a better sense of what are the actual needs, where should we make investments, where can Congress Make more informed decisions and make the money more accountable rather than if we had a big pot of cash . Host talking with Stephen Ellis about the Hurricane Harvey relief effort. If you live in the central time zone, call 202 7488000. If you live in mountain or pacific, call 202 7488001. If you happen to live in texas or louisiana, we ask that you call 202 7488002. We have a call from andy in indianapolis. What is on your mind . Ourer i am a teacher in school district, and we raised money for relief, where would you suggest we send that money . Guest i dont really have a list of charities or where you should send the money. There are some Media Outlets that are tracking that and individuals. I dont have a good answer for you. Host here is a story you wrote for the washington examiner. Exploiting Hurricane Harvey, big spendersfear will capitalize. A lot that for us. Guest of times when you see a large spending package, no one wants to be seen as opposed to Disaster Relief, a lot of addons can be tacked onto that piece of legislation. The other thing, and we were concerned about this in sandy, there were things in the regular budget that are subject to budge t caps. If you do it through emergency spending, all of a sudden those caps dont matter. You can avoid that particular restriction. At the end of the day, is still ds to the deficit and debt. Host federally backed insurance for 5 million homes and businesses. Fema administers it. The federal authorization expires on september 30 unless congress acts. It is nearly 25 billion in debt. What is the deal . How did that happen . Guest the program was created in 1968 because there was this view that the private insurance market, there was no available affordable Flood Insurance. Also the idea was that we are doling out this ad hoc disaster assistance, maybe we can get some money on the front and so we do not have to have such a large disaster spending bill. The program was created. The problem is it has subsidies built into the program to attract people to buy it. The other thing is you have this issue of adverse selection bias. The only people buying it are those people most likely to use it. Caret it into a health type of thing, there is no healthy 24yearold in the Flood Insurance market. To put that into perspective, out of that 5 million policies, more than half of them are in florida, louisiana, texas. These are all places that you have heard of from disasters and flooding. These are places that are most likely to need it. What happens is after the storms in 2005, and it wasnt just wilma, it was rita and and we ran out of names for the storms that here, the program was 18 billion in debt. Then you have superstorm sandy, and the program is now then it was about 24 billion in debt. Last year where the major storm of note was Hurricane Matthew and a bunch of significant rain events, they still had to borrow money from the treasury, and now it is 24. 6 billion in debt. If you look at harvey, Harris County where houston is located has about 250,000 Flood Insurance policies. The insurance value is about 70 billion. Obviously, it is not going to be a total loss on all those policies. Even if it was just 15 , that is a 10. 5 billion hit to the program. That is more than we got from sandy. It is not just that the Program Expires september 30, after sandy they set of Borrowing Limit of 30 billion. They may have to actually increase the Borrowing Limit as well to accommodate the claims from harvey. Host lets go back to the phones. We have marked from new york. Good morning. Caller thanks for cspan. I want to say that i survived hurricane sandy. I lost my roof, but the insurance paid for it. Homeowners insurance, so i did not use any federal tax dollars. I just wanted to ask the gentleman to comment on the fact that Big Companies like exxon, verizon, General Electric pay zero in taxes while hardworking people like myself pay up to 30 of our salary in taxes. Also the immense amount of our tax dollars that go to the pentagon. I dont think there has ever been an auditing of that money or some way to figure out how our money is being wasted there. I will let the gentleman,. Thank you. Gentleman comment. Guest thank you. He hit on some of the greatest hits for taxpayers for common sense. He mentioned he lost his roof and it was paid for by Homeowners Insurance. That is an interesting point, the difference between wind damage and flood damage. He lost his roof because sandy blew the roof off. Homeowners insurance, but most Homeowners Insurance does not cover flooding. If it had flooded instead of being wind damage, which in harvey the wind damage is very little, some of the risk modeling Companies Say it is likely the insured losses are the private sector will be a field billion dollars few billion dollars. It was five days of rain rather than the category for hurricane winds. Hoping you develop a private Flood Insurance market, it becomes a more normal category, and you dont have this type of issue where is it wind or rain and companies trying to push the burden onto the Flood Insurance program. Senator trent lott from mississippi actually sued his insurer after katrina over the wind rain thing. That was an interesting point he brought out. As far as exxon and other companies not paying taxes, we want to make sure everybody is paying their fair share. Loopholes going after in the federal code and want to see conference of tax reform make sure everybody is paying re andfair sha eliminate the brakes that companies can exploit to reduce their tax burden where you and i dont have the ability of doing. The about auditing pentagon, we are cognizant of waste and the pentagon. We are talking about an agency that gets 600 billion a year, cannot pass an audit. They have spent billions of dollars trying to get auditable. Rather than fixating on the audit issue, lets have spending accountability at the pentagon to make sure the money is spent wisely. I talked earlier about the dodge of shifting money into the emergency funding, the pentagon has their own emergency funding slush account that is not subject to caps. As congress is trying to feed more money into congress, they thishoveling money into that are not contingencies. We are talking building construction, which is obviously not a contingency. Mark. K he let me hit on some of the greatest hits for taxpayers for common sense. People can go to taxpayer. Net to read more about it. Host lets hear from leo from louisiana. Good morning. Caller good morning. Thanks to cspan. I want to let you know that you have had an intriguing morning. Very interesting. Is toic of discussion taxpayerscost for Disaster Relief. To taxpayers for Disaster Relief. I am from louisiana. I can tell you we have had our fair share, and i am 60 years old and also a military veteran. I want to emphasize, cost to taxpayers for Disaster Relief, thexperience has been that United States of america in reference to these Disaster Relief programs, my experiences has been where i see these wayle go more out of their not to give relief than to give relief. What i have noticed from that, same way with veterans, and i dont want to deviate from the subject, we are all on Disaster Relief. In reference to Disaster Relief for hurricanes and disasters, i dont understand why cant these boards or whoever governs these peopleactually have that is experiencing or has catastrophe. Guest thank you for the call. Thank you for your service. I am also a coast guard veteran. I have seen disaster from orferent sides of the issue table. I think it is a difficult issue, sort of, as americans we are a carded but we cannot we are bighearted, but we cannot afford to be softheaded. Every dollar spent, we hope not to spend that dollar in the future. We rebuild better and smarter. In some cases that means not rebuilding in certain areas. Helping people out of harms way rather than helping them stay in that vulnerable location. That is one of the reasons why we were extremely disappointed that a couple of weeks ago President Trump signed an executive order, his infrastructure order, it contained a repeal of an order president obama signed in january 2015 that have a floodplain standard that says if you are going to get federal assistance for building or rebuilding that you had to have disaster planning in effect, and you have to build, it depended on agency, but two feet above the 100 year flood level. That was going to basically assure that we are going to rebuild in a way that we are going to be less honorable vulnerable in the future. We will be less likely have to spend dollars in the future. That doesnt guarantee that. We also know that the best way to avoid this post disaster cost is to invest in mitigation in the frontend. For every dollar spent on mitigation, it is estimated that saves you four dollars and Disaster Response afterwards. That is where you should be concentrating our efforts. Every dollar we spend on Disaster Relief, we should use that to presond to a future disaster. We knew this before harvey because you also had ike and rita and allison. This is a place that is vulnerable. We should be ready for the future harveys. Host this is a tweet. It says, i am 74. Zones was and flood suddenly prime. Insiders got rich. Louisiana, good morning. Caller how are you doing this morning . Host doing fine. Yourself . Caller doing well. It is twoface harvey. I havent unable to cut my grass two weeks. What i want to get at is i moved down here from pennsylvania. I am a carpetbagger. That is what they call the yankees that move down south. Know, was up there, you when sandy hit, i was even affected in pittsburgh. I got a little fender bender. That aint nothing. It is terrible what is happening to people in houston. It is awful. I feel like this nation, this nation was founded on, i mean, billion, ahe 45 shouldnt be able to where does that money go . I want some of that money. I know i feel like americans, i love this country, but people just want they want, they are looking out for themselves i mean these people in office, they dont think they can be touched, but one if by land, two if by sea. Paul revere said that. You, gentlemen. Guest thank you. Host that gets to the point we talked about earlier guest we have to have accountability. It is making sure the public has confidence that the money is not being wasted. You can document that. You end up having this skepticism about government for future responses. The other thing to put into perspective about Flood Insurance, an administrator at was said, last year, there that huge flooding events in baton rouge, further south from shreveport where the gentleman was going from, and he said the average person with Flood Insurance who put in a claim got 80,000 in their Flood Insurance. The average person who did not have Flood Insurance, they got 9,150. If you dont have Flood Insurance, you are in a difficult spot. There are a lot of americans dont have Flood Insurance who who should have Flood Insurance who dont. You can get access to a First Responders<\/a> and getting people out of harms way. And then as you start to move into recovery it is hard to know , exactly what the needs are. You want to start slowly in some respects. In that you need to open up this spicket ofcash cash. You want to make sure that money is being spent wisely and appropriately. Initially it is going to be a lot of debris removal. Things just have to be taken away. Then trying to figure out what can be saved, what has to be torn down, what is where are the places that you should not rebuild and invest. It is going to take time. It is a long process. Host we know the Trump Administration<\/a> is going to ask initially for 6 billion. How did they arrive at the number . Stephen it is hard. What i read was 5. 9 billion, not even quite 6 billion. Host i rounded up. Stephen i understand. We want to sound more precise. There is no way they know they need exactly 5. 9 billion. For some reason someone shows decided that that was better than 6 billion. I dont know why. Some of it is because there is a separate account fema has access to called the Disaster Relief<\/a> fund. That funds the initial disaster efforts so that congress does not have to quickly appropriate additional money to fema. So this is we are at the end of the fiscal year. It was only down to about 2 billion, hard to say exactly how much, so they wanted to make sure they had enough money continued Disaster Relief<\/a> money and then bridge as they make a reasoned decision on what the level of funding should be. Host we are talking about numbers in the billions of dollars. Take a look at the screen. This is Disaster Relief<\/a> from hurricanes past. 2005, 45 billion went to Hurricane Katrina<\/a> and rita. 2005o Hurricane Katrina<\/a> and rita. 2012was 13 billion, and hurricane sandy, 18 billion spent on that effort. How does that inform lawmakers as they move forward . Guest some of it is you have to figure out what is the total amount. In 2005 with katrina, you had initial chunks of change billions of dollars approved for katrina. Katrina continued to receive spendingrelief five years after the disaster occurred. It is hard to compare these type of disasters. Im not sure it is fair to the victims to do that. People were talking about the size and scope of harvey, and you have around 50 individuals that lost their lives. In katrina, 1300 people lost their lives. It is hard to put a sense of all that. I dont want to put dollars and cents on some of the impact, not just of people that lost their life, but people that have their livelihood destroyed or savings gone. As you go into the federal funding, looking at katrina, in the end, the government spent hundreds of billions of dollars in response to katrina. Sandy is about 60 billion. 50 billion. Host is there a mechanism for oversight . Looking at these numbers, it sounds like the government is printing money. Clearly people need relief, but is there oversight . Guest that is a great question. Is actually ad hoc disaster by disaster. After katrina, initial concerns about the Disaster Response<\/a>, the fema director was dismissed. General for the department of Homeland Security<\/a>, which fema is part of, became kind of the king Inspector General<\/a> that marshall all of the efforts. Inspector generals are independent entities within Government Agencies<\/a> that do not respond to the secretary of Homeland Security<\/a> that are there to make sure the money is being spent wisely all the time, not just during disaster. I believe his name was skinner. Main ringleader that marshalled the forces. On sandy a came on the heels of the recovery act. There was a recovery act transparency board that are really existed that was tracking all the money. Congress said before you all leave, we will extend your tenure, and can you watch out sandy spending as well . Something we will call for in any Disaster Recovery<\/a> money is that on light in the recovery in thethat unlike recovery act, the money doesnt need to be tagged as sandy money. Agencies did not attack the tag the money as sandy money, which makes it hard to track. You had a very convoluted way of tracking it. I can say that because we tried to track it as well. We even talked to the rap board at the time, and they threw up their hands. Is not hundreds of billions of dollars, you dont want to set up a separate office. You want to make sure they are able to follow that money all the way down to the state and municipal level. Host funding for sandy eight was in the news again because aid was in the news again because senator ted cruz years ago voted against the aid as did a number of the members of the texas delegation. What do you think about that . Guest people can go back and look at our website. We looked at sandy, and since our inception in 1995 have looked at Flood Insurance<\/a> and disaster spending. We closely examined sandy at the time. What we said verbatim was there is some funding in here that is not emergency that should be meted out over time rather than a large chunk of money. Also some of the money was going to federal agencies to make the em whole from whatever damages. Buying ance, we were couple of new cars for the department of treasury Inspector General<\/a>s office while in reality the department of judiciary has a fleet of 40,000 vehicles. They couldve obviously not retired a few or transfer them around. We had problems with the way things were done. Billion, and 6 additional money in the future, we have a better sense of what are the actual needs, where should we make investments, where can Congress Make<\/a> more informed decisions and make the money more accountable rather than if we had a big pot of cash . Host talking with Stephen Ellis<\/a> about the Hurricane Harvey<\/a> relief effort. If you live in the central time zone, call 202 7488000. If you live in mountain or pacific, call 202 7488001. If you happen to live in texas or louisiana, we ask that you call 202 7488002. We have a call from andy in indianapolis. What is on your mind . Ourer i am a teacher in school district, and we raised money for relief, where would you suggest we send that money . Guest i dont really have a list of charities or where you should send the money. There are some Media Outlets<\/a> that are tracking that and individuals. I dont have a good answer for you. Host here is a story you wrote for the washington examiner. Exploiting Hurricane Harvey<\/a>, big spendersfear will capitalize. A lot that for us. Guest of times when you see a large spending package, no one wants to be seen as opposed to Disaster Relief<\/a>, a lot of addons can be tacked onto that piece of legislation. The other thing, and we were concerned about this in sandy, there were things in the regular budget that are subject to budge t caps. If you do it through emergency spending, all of a sudden those caps dont matter. You can avoid that particular restriction. At the end of the day, is still ds to the deficit and debt. Host federally backed insurance for 5 million homes and businesses. Fema administers it. The federal authorization expires on september 30 unless congress acts. It is nearly 25 billion in debt. What is the deal . How did that happen . Guest the program was created in 1968 because there was this view that the private insurance market, there was no available affordable Flood Insurance<\/a>. Also the idea was that we are doling out this ad hoc disaster assistance, maybe we can get some money on the front and so we do not have to have such a large disaster spending bill. The program was created. The problem is it has subsidies built into the program to attract people to buy it. The other thing is you have this issue of adverse selection bias. The only people buying it are those people most likely to use it. Caret it into a health type of thing, there is no healthy 24yearold in the Flood Insurance<\/a> market. To put that into perspective, out of that 5 million policies, more than half of them are in florida, louisiana, texas. These are all places that you have heard of from disasters and flooding. These are places that are most likely to need it. What happens is after the storms in 2005, and it wasnt just wilma, it was rita and and we ran out of names for the storms that here, the program was 18 billion in debt. Then you have superstorm sandy, and the program is now then it was about 24 billion in debt. Last year where the major storm of note was Hurricane Matthew<\/a> and a bunch of significant rain events, they still had to borrow money from the treasury, and now it is 24. 6 billion in debt. If you look at harvey, Harris County<\/a> where houston is located has about 250,000 Flood Insurance<\/a> policies. The insurance value is about 70 billion. Obviously, it is not going to be a total loss on all those policies. Even if it was just 15 , that is a 10. 5 billion hit to the program. That is more than we got from sandy. It is not just that the Program Expires<\/a> september 30, after sandy they set of Borrowing Limit<\/a> of 30 billion. They may have to actually increase the Borrowing Limit<\/a> as well to accommodate the claims from harvey. Host lets go back to the phones. We have marked from new york. Good morning. Caller thanks for cspan. I want to say that i survived hurricane sandy. I lost my roof, but the insurance paid for it. Homeowners insurance, so i did not use any federal tax dollars. I just wanted to ask the gentleman to comment on the fact that Big Companies<\/a> like exxon, verizon, General Electric<\/a> pay zero in taxes while hardworking people like myself pay up to 30 of our salary in taxes. Also the immense amount of our tax dollars that go to the pentagon. I dont think there has ever been an auditing of that money or some way to figure out how our money is being wasted there. I will let the gentleman,. Thank you. Gentleman comment. Guest thank you. He hit on some of the greatest hits for taxpayers for common sense. He mentioned he lost his roof and it was paid for by Homeowners Insurance<\/a>. That is an interesting point, the difference between wind damage and flood damage. He lost his roof because sandy blew the roof off. Homeowners insurance, but most Homeowners Insurance<\/a> does not cover flooding. If it had flooded instead of being wind damage, which in harvey the wind damage is very little, some of the risk modeling Companies Say<\/a> it is likely the insured losses are the private sector will be a field billion dollars few billion dollars. It was five days of rain rather than the category for hurricane winds. Hoping you develop a private Flood Insurance<\/a> market, it becomes a more normal category, and you dont have this type of issue where is it wind or rain and companies trying to push the burden onto the Flood Insurance<\/a> program. Senator trent lott from mississippi actually sued his insurer after katrina over the wind rain thing. That was an interesting point he brought out. As far as exxon and other companies not paying taxes, we want to make sure everybody is paying their fair share. Loopholes going after in the federal code and want to see conference of tax reform make sure everybody is paying re andfair sha eliminate the brakes that companies can exploit to reduce their tax burden where you and i dont have the ability of doing. The about auditing pentagon, we are cognizant of waste and the pentagon. We are talking about an agency that gets 600 billion a year, cannot pass an audit. They have spent billions of dollars trying to get auditable. Rather than fixating on the audit issue, lets have spending accountability at the pentagon to make sure the money is spent wisely. I talked earlier about the dodge of shifting money into the emergency funding, the pentagon has their own emergency funding slush account that is not subject to caps. As congress is trying to feed more money into congress, they thishoveling money into that are not contingencies. We are talking building construction, which is obviously not a contingency. Mark. K he let me hit on some of the greatest hits for taxpayers for common sense. People can go to taxpayer. Net to read more about it. Host lets hear from leo from louisiana. Good morning. Caller good morning. Thanks to cspan. I want to let you know that you have had an intriguing morning. Very interesting. Is toic of discussion taxpayerscost for Disaster Relief<\/a>. To taxpayers for Disaster Relief<\/a>. I am from louisiana. I can tell you we have had our fair share, and i am 60 years old and also a military veteran. I want to emphasize, cost to taxpayers for Disaster Relief<\/a>, thexperience has been that United States<\/a> of america in reference to these Disaster Relief<\/a> programs, my experiences has been where i see these wayle go more out of their not to give relief than to give relief. What i have noticed from that, same way with veterans, and i dont want to deviate from the subject, we are all on Disaster Relief<\/a>. In reference to Disaster Relief<\/a> for hurricanes and disasters, i dont understand why cant these boards or whoever governs these peopleactually have that is experiencing or has catastrophe. Guest thank you for the call. Thank you for your service. I am also a coast guard veteran. I have seen disaster from orferent sides of the issue table. I think it is a difficult issue, sort of, as americans we are a carded but we cannot we are bighearted, but we cannot afford to be softheaded. Every dollar spent, we hope not to spend that dollar in the future. We rebuild better and smarter. In some cases that means not rebuilding in certain areas. Helping people out of harms way rather than helping them stay in that vulnerable location. That is one of the reasons why we were extremely disappointed that a couple of weeks ago President Trump<\/a> signed an executive order, his infrastructure order, it contained a repeal of an order president obama signed in january 2015 that have a floodplain standard that says if you are going to get federal assistance for building or rebuilding that you had to have disaster planning in effect, and you have to build, it depended on agency, but two feet above the 100 year flood level. That was going to basically assure that we are going to rebuild in a way that we are going to be less honorable vulnerable in the future. We will be less likely have to spend dollars in the future. That doesnt guarantee that. We also know that the best way to avoid this post disaster cost is to invest in mitigation in the frontend. For every dollar spent on mitigation, it is estimated that saves you four dollars and Disaster Response<\/a> afterwards. That is where you should be concentrating our efforts. Every dollar we spend on Disaster Relief<\/a>, we should use that to presond to a future disaster. We knew this before harvey because you also had ike and rita and allison. This is a place that is vulnerable. We should be ready for the future harveys. Host this is a tweet. It says, i am 74. Zones was and flood suddenly prime. Insiders got rich. Louisiana, good morning. Caller how are you doing this morning . Host doing fine. Yourself . Caller doing well. It is twoface harvey. I havent unable to cut my grass two weeks. What i want to get at is i moved down here from pennsylvania. I am a carpetbagger. That is what they call the yankees that move down south. Know, was up there, you when sandy hit, i was even affected in pittsburgh. I got a little fender bender. That aint nothing. It is terrible what is happening to people in houston. It is awful. I feel like this nation, this nation was founded on, i mean, billion, ahe 45 shouldnt be able to where does that money go . I want some of that money. I know i feel like americans, i love this country, but people just want they want, they are looking out for themselves i mean these people in office, they dont think they can be touched, but one if by land, two if by sea. Paul revere said that. You, gentlemen. Guest thank you. Host that gets to the point we talked about earlier guest we have to have accountability. It is making sure the public has confidence that the money is not being wasted. You can document that. You end up having this skepticism about government for future responses. The other thing to put into perspective about Flood Insurance<\/a>, an administrator at was said, last year, there that huge flooding events in baton rouge, further south from shreveport where the gentleman was going from, and he said the average person with Flood Insurance<\/a> who put in a claim got 80,000 in their Flood Insurance<\/a>. The average person who did not have Flood Insurance<\/a>, they got 9,150. If you dont have Flood Insurance<\/a>, you are in a difficult spot. There are a lot of americans dont have Flood Insurance<\/a> who who should have Flood Insurance<\/a> who dont. You can get access to a Small Business<\/a> administration loan, which is a lowinterest disaster loan, but then you are paying mortgage, paying the loan payment, and you are probably having to figure out secondary housing. Host what about renters . We all hear about homeowners, what about all the people in houston who rent . Rentersertainly insurance is to be a private thing. Normally it would be whoever owns the building would be getting Flood Insurance<\/a>, and the renters have to try to cover their contents, and secondly there are no apartments to rent. I know of people who are displaced in houston, who are scrambling to find other places to stay if they need to stay there. That is one of the issues with these disasters, the most impacted are the poorest of us all. They may not only have lost know,home through, you because their apartment is gone, but they may not have lost only their job, but their place to live is gone. They may have lost their ability to get to a job. Those are the things we have to think about. Host that is a good point, especially for parttime workers do not have a job to go back to. Another tweet, the only Insurance Programs<\/a> that can go broke and still survive are invented by congress. Lets go back to the phones. We have tina from north carolina. That morning. Caller good morning. Thank you. I love the station. I have a question. Half al our i am a block from the ocean, so how will the insurance be affected obviously, will be donating to the funds being used . Guest thank you for the call. The way the Flood Insurance<\/a> program puts together they are their rate structure, they look at what is the average loss year, and they want to make sure they have enough premium to account for what they expect in losses. The problem with that is twofold. There are policies that are explicitly subsidized because they came into the program before there was flood , or they rate math have to actually change risk zones and they get to keep which is zone rate, lower. Yesterday the congressional budget office, the scorekeeper, they came out with the report that says fema is under charging by over a billion dollars a year. Basically, they are structurally not charging enough to actually count for the losses. , even beforening this reauthorization, Flood Insurance<\/a> rates have been going up a bit each year. We are hopeful, and we have seen signs, the private sector wants to write Flood Insurance<\/a>. They are getting more engaged in the Flood Insurance<\/a> program. 20 companies are writing first dollar Flood Insurance<\/a> in florida now. I am not going to say this huge as far as penetration, but it is beginning. It has to start somewhere. As the rates go up in the federal Flood Insurance<\/a> program, it will become more competitive. Hopefully as private Flood Insurance<\/a> becomes a more normalized product, people instead of having to go out and get this exotic product, it will arrive on their existing homeowners policy. We are hoping more americans will get coverage. Clearly more americans need coverage then have it. Announcer cspans washington journal. Coming up sunday morning, discussing the role of fema and Hurricane Harvey<\/a>. Advancedthe school of studies, talking about vegans with north korea. Michael leavitt, the former health and Human Services<\/a> secretary under president bush discusses Health Concerns<\/a> post Hurricane Harvey<\/a>. Be sure to watch washington journal live at 7 00 a. M. Eastern on sunday morning. Join the discussion. Announcer President Trump<\/a> spent much of the day in houston assessing the damage from Hurricane Harvey<\/a>. He visited with people affected by the storm and he met with the texas delegation. This is from the convention center. [inaudible]","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia800809.us.archive.org\/21\/items\/CSPAN_20170902_230300_Washington_Journal_Stephen_Ellis_Discusses_Federally_Funded_Disaster...\/CSPAN_20170902_230300_Washington_Journal_Stephen_Ellis_Discusses_Federally_Funded_Disaster....thumbs\/CSPAN_20170902_230300_Washington_Journal_Stephen_Ellis_Discusses_Federally_Funded_Disaster..._000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240629T12:35:10+00:00"}