Romney Flips on FEMA a Week before Election

[_Morley]

I suspect the American Red Cross does what it does better than any government agency would. And for less money.

It may indeed, but it does very different things than "any government agency."

This is a little like the "we need a businessman to run the government" mantra. The government is not a business.

[_Drifting]

Don't worry, Mitt will flop back once the election's over...

[_subgenius]

This guy is truly pathetic. Willing to say anything to get elected.

Romney's position is still consistent.
Just because FEMA should be dissolved and those resources should be distributed to the states does not contradict that while FEMA does exist it should help.
Posts like yours are "truly pathetic" and desperate attempts to cling to the welfare tit.
You may be against states' rights but most of the country still recognize the beauty of being United States...not a united state.

[_Drifting]

This guy is truly pathetic. Willing to say anything to get elected.

Romney's position is still consistent.
Just because FEMA should be dissolved and those resources should be distributed to the states does not contradict that while FEMA does exist it should help.
Posts like yours are "truly pathetic" and desperate attempts to cling to the welfare tit.
You may be against states' rights but most of the country still recognize the beauty of being United States...not a united state.

[_MeDotOrg]

This guy is truly pathetic. Willing to say anything to get elected.

If we are to believe Romney, FEMA would be best divvied up as block grants to the states. Presumably every American would get a blanket and 1 night's stay at a Motel 6 .

Seriously, how would this work? What happens if Nebraska has no major disasters for 3 years, but Tennessee has 5 disasters in two years? Would they run out of their FEMA allocation? Would Nebraska 'sell' Tennessee their FEMA vouchers?

This sounds a little like dividing up health care and saying your left arm gets $1,000, your torso gets $5,000, you head gets $4,000....

by the way, Michael Brown (FEMA director of Katrina-'Heckuva job, Brownie' fame) said that Obama moved to quickly, by declaring an emergency before the storm hit so FEMA could pre-position supplies.

All I can say is, if anyone is an expert on not moving too quickly, it's Michael Brown.

[_subgenius]

If we are to believe Romney, FEMA would be best divvied up as block grants to the states. Presumably every American would get a blanket and 1 night's stay at a Motel 6 .

obviously you know better than that
....but essentially FEMA does this anyway...they are, arguably, an unnecessary bureaucracy in the process. FEMA's ability to quickly mobilize and understand local nuances is limited in comparison to what a state is capable of - given the same resources.
Exactly how is FEMA more effective than a State?

Seriously, how would this work? What happens if Nebraska has no major disasters for 3 years, but Tennessee has 5 disasters in two years? Would they run out of their FEMA allocation? Would Nebraska 'sell' Tennessee their FEMA vouchers?

Yes, how ever do the states deal with having unbalanced needs? Thank goodness Big Brother is there to care for everything...obviously they should do all the thinking also.
(good thing every state has the same number of schools)
Exactly where do you think the resources for FEMA come from?

This sounds a little like dividing up health care and saying your left arm gets $1,000, your torso gets $5,000, you head gets $4,000....

?

by the way, Michael Brown (FEMA director of Katrina-'Heckuva job, Brownie' fame) said that Obama moved to quickly, by declaring an emergency before the storm hit so FEMA could pre-position supplies.

arguably true. FEMA likely did not "position" anything...that is a term they use for having someone plug in the phones at the office.

All I can say is, if anyone is an expert on not moving too quickly, it's Michael Brown.

Yes, because evoking the Michael Brown card is such a good argument for the continuation of FEMA.
You have basically highlighted the larger flaw of FEMA being a federal institution...thank you.

[_cinepro]

I don't know what the current budget is, but C-Span says the 2012 budget was almost $14billion:

http://www.c-span.org/Events/FEMA-Direc ... 737428850/

Reports say Romney would cut $500million of that.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/ne ... s-20121030

I'm all for saving money where we can, but let's not place undue attention on meaningless budget adjustments. There are different ways to define the public debt, but if we go with the debt clock, it's $16trillion.

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

Just a reminder, a "trillion" dollars are a thousand thousand million. In other words, take $1million and multiply it by 1,000, and then multiply it again by 1,000.

Cutting $500million from FEMA is straightening deck chairs on the Titanic.

[_Kevin Graham]

So where in the above did he say he would certainly trash FEMA?

This was a direct response to the specific question of what he would do with FEMA. His response was that we should let the states handle disasters, or even better, private companies (for a profit, one assumes).

It seems pretty clear, unless you want to believe that all his debate arguments were purely philosophical and theoretical musings, rather than statements of something he would actually do.

Precisely. But Jason has a tendency to abandon critical thinking when there are criticisms of Romney, but then turn around and become hyper critical about bias against Romney.

The simple fact is Romney is a pathetic liar who is now saying he would fund FEMA so it can do its job; when a disaster occurs a week before election, of course. What a joke this guy is. Of course Jason will chalk this all up to me being a biased leftist or what not, but he will never be able to change the fact that Romney is making an ass of himself with all these flip flops.