A Stitch in Haste

FEMA Director David Paulison on Meet the Press:

MR. RUSSERT: So the money will get directly to the people, but when they get it they won't be able to use it on tattoos or guns or condoms-to-go, as was evidenced with Katrina?

MR. PAULISON: I don't have any control once we give people money. Normally, we put money -- either give them a check or wire directly to their bank account. Once they get that money for, for issues the Congress has allowed us to give people money for, how they spend it is out of our control. You know, that's an individual choice. So if they take that money, waste it on something else and don't rebuild their home with it or don't replace a car or don't pay medical expenses, you know, that's, that's a personal decision they have to make. We simply give them the dollars they're allowed under law, and then they should be spending it on what it's given to them for, but we don't have any control once we turn those dollars over to them.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

The government has been limiting handouts to in-kind assistance since the creation of the welfare state. Food Stamps go to, um, food. Tuition assistance goes to, um, tuition. Fraud exists, to be sure, but it is minuscule and not dismissed with a bureaucratic shrug.

Or the government could instead direct aid to agencies, such as the American Red Cross or local hospitals and shelters, rather than to individuals.

And of course, taxes -- unlike the handouts that they fund -- are anything but "an individual choice." So such a statement becomes especially obnoxious.

Now as any good student of economics knows, to some extent this is merely a question of appearances. If you were planning to spend $50 on food and I give you $50 worth of food, then you might very well spend the original $50 on something other than food, something I would not endorse. So be it.

But what's wrong with keeping up appearances? What's wrong with taxpayers demanding that, if disaster "victims" are going to defraud us, then they should at least have to work at it? Why should we catalyze the process by pretending that it's "just another cost" of disaster relief?

FEMA should not sit idly by, allowing disaster aid abusers to piss on our shoes and then telling us the levee broke.