What Congress can do about Harvey
“A six-month extension would be ideal,” says R.J. Lehmann of the bipartisan policy research group R Street. “We can get through the initial piece of this where the most important thing is to get to people who need help. Stage two is to discuss some of the longer-term things that need to be addressed before this falls off the radar. And it’s going to fall off of the radar about a year from now. Nobody will be talking about this anymore.”
Beyond Harvey relief and NFIP reform, there are numerous disaster response and mitigation ideas floating around policy circles. I counted around two dozen bills on the issue in Congress, some of which have been roped into NFIP reform debates, but some of which are entirely independent. Many of these ideas deal with inventive new ways to finance mitigation efforts—to make sure rebuilt cities are less prone to future disasters or damages. These are important matters to consider, as Lightbody notes that very little disaster relief money goes towards such efforts. While the idea is popular, politicians are loathe to stack dollars on top of already costly relief measures to fund them, and mitigation can be pricey. But we probably won’t see much action on any of these proposals.Some of them “will get raised,” says Lehmann. Passing a bill is another matter. “This cycle’s already packed. For something to come out of nowhere—there’s no time for committee hearings, there’s no time for the coalition building that would be required.”
