Battle of the Blogs: FEMA - Essay Example

Big things require big government. In a situation like Sandy, it is essential that a federal government exists to manage resources to best help a large devastated area. The federal government is better able to keep emergencies highly expensive and specialized resources. The fact is that each state only has a major emergency very rarely and that it would be incredibly inefficient for each state to keep disaster resources. The resources would inevitably drift into unimportance during a particularly tight budget year in which a disaster has not occurred for a long period of time and then would be neglected and cut. A disaster would then hit, demonstrating how much those resources are needed, and people would suffer. The United States can collectively keep those resources available much more efficiently because the country as a whole has to deal with emergencies much more than particular states ever would. Finally, pushing more responsibilities onto already cash-strapped states would be incredibly dangerous and irresponsible.

        Liberal commentators love to point to major events such as the recent hurricane Sandy as absolute proof that it would be more than impossible to limit the size of government without making drastic changes and harming people who need help.

        The problem is, however, that the liberals’ logic is often twisted and contorted beyond recognition. One of the biggest logical problems with liberals is their constant insistence that pushing more service provision onto the budgets of already beleaguered states would be unacceptable. The problem with this logic is that it misses the point entirely: states should be collecting a broader share of the taxes *and* giving more of the services. Obviously one without the other would be ludicrous, but pretending that transferring a lot of responsibilities to the states without also cutting federal taxes (and thus letting states charge higher taxes) is a possibility shows how broken the liberal’s argument is. They cannot even imagine shrinking the federal government, so it does not occur to them that that is a possibility when transferring things to the states.

        Even worse, liberals pretend that the only way to get a coordinated response is through having federal control. Yet somehow, they love the United Nations, an organization where everything is done through the coordination of smaller parts. Putting disaster management to the states does not mean the states cannot coordinate with each other to make sure that their responses are appropriate and large enough.