Key Vote NO on the Disaster Relief Act of 2013

Dear FreedomWorks member,

As one of our millions of FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your Members of Congress and urge them to vote NO on H.R. 152, the “Disaster Relief Appropriations Act”, and NO on the Frelinghuysen Amendment to add $33 billion in spending to the bill. 

There are a multitude of problems with this bill.  First, H.R. 152 itself contains $17 billion in spending, with another $33 billion to be added by Rep. Frelinghuysen’s amendment.  That’s $50 billion in new spending, most of which is not offset and will therefore add to our trillion-dollar annual budget deficit.  

This leads to the second problem, which is that a large portion of this spending is not for acute, “emergency” disaster relief at all, which should be for getting those who suffered from the effects of the disaster through the immediate aftermath.  This bill, being voted on two months after the fact, is mostly composed of long-term building projects, including in states not even affected by Hurricane Sandy.  If these projects – which are essentially stimulus spending – really require federal funding, they should be accounted for through the normal budget process, not lumped in with a disaster relief bill.   

Finally, it is unclear why the federal government should be using federal taxpayer dollars – collected from all fifty states – to provide state-level disaster relief at all.  Federal funds should be used to repair federal property, but state and local governments should budget and prepare for periodic disasters such as Hurricane Sandy, instead of relying upon the federal government and its inept agencies such as FEMA. 

I urge you to call your U.S. Representative and ask him or her to vote NO on H.R. 152 and the Frelinghuysen Amendment. We may count the vote on both H.R. 152 and the Frelinghuysen amendment as KEY VOTES when calculating the FreedomWorks Economic Freedom Scorecard for 2012. The Economic Freedom Scorecard is used to determine eligibility for the FreedomFighter Award, which recognizes members of Congress with voting records that support economic freedom.

Sincerely,

Matt Kibbe, President and CEO, FreedomWorks