Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., shakes the hands of witness Lindene Patton’s daughters, who attended the hearing. Patton testified that government spending after natural disasters is more costly than initiating preventative programs at the Senate committee hearing on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
Stephanie Haines/Medill
WASHINGTON — The federal government needs to invest in more preventative measures to protect the countryagainst natural disasters, senators said Wednesday.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Carper, D-Del., and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., stressed the economic harm that weather brings to communities as well as to the federal government. Among recent weather crises were the Polar Vortex of this winter, California’s drought and tornadoes that ravaged parts of the Midwest last year.
“The costs of these weather events keep going up at a time when we are trying to bring government spending down,” Carper said. “That is one of the reasons why, for the first time, the Government Accountability Office last year listed climate change as one of the biggest financial risks facing our country.”
Government spending in response to weather disasters is very costly, witnesses atthe hearing said. The government could save money by initiating more preventative programs for communities to safeguard, buildings, roads and bridges.
One example of a preventative program is the Resilience STAR Home Pilot Project. Introduced by the Department of Homeland Security in November, the government-led initiative combines public and private insurance forces to build more disaster-resistant buildings.
Witness Lindene Patton, of the Zurich Insurance Group, Ltd., said expanding these kinds of programs would bolster communities vulnerable to weather disasters, as well as lower the costs of rebuilding.
“Resilience spending is a wiser investment than disaster response spending,” Patton said.
David Heyman, the assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security, said the federal government should reward communities that invest in such risk-management programs.
“Because the government does not own infrastructure, they can incentivize plans for action so that people are motivated and incentivized through self-preservation or mortgage and insurance reductions,” Heyman said. “What the federal government can bring is national perspective, which is more than any insurance company can bring.”
Additionally, Carper brought up the Flood Insurance Program, an initiative that helps communities suffering from hurricane-induced flooding. Since the inception of the Flood Insurance Program in 1968, debt payments to the program total about $24 billion, up from the $17.8 billion owed before Hurricane Sandy in fall 2012, Carper said.
“At the end of the day, someone has got to pay for this,” said witness Mark Gaffigan, the managing director of natural resources and environmental issues at the GAO, an investigative arm of Congress. “It’s a balance between taxpayers and homeowners.”
Gaffigan said the Flood Insurance Program is one of the biggest financial concerns for the government. Other government risk-managemengprograms include the Homeland Security Grant Program, administered by Federal Emergency Management Agency.
