Fixing Iowa
June 17th, 2008I received the following email from a good friend and Iowan this morning:
My family is ok, but many, many people here have not been so lucky. Lots of people were told when they bought their homes that there was no need for flood insurance because the water never gets this high. Levees are breaking, roads are closed, towns and hospitals are cut off. It’s unbelievable.
The President of the United States had this to say:
President Bush says he will inspect flood damage in Iowa on Thursday. The president said that an existing federal disaster relief fund has enough in it to cover the recent severe Midwest flooding. He also said he will work with Congress on emergency legislation to help replenish the fund to be ready for possible additional natural disasters. Bush was briefed on the flooding Tuesday by federal officials involved in the relief effort.
The president told reporters (in his words), “We’re concerned about people who lost their homes, who lost their businesses. We’re in constant contact with people on the ground.”
I think it is tragic that there are people who have lost everything because they took it for granted that floodwaters never get as high as they have gotten this week, and I believe that the American Government has a duty to assist these families and businesses in paying for their homes or else we are going to leave thousands of people in a state of suffering, and that is simply unacceptable. We might as well not have a government if Washington doesn’t believe that “promoting the general welfare” involves aiding all those people in Iowa.