1.5: Disaster Fund
ESTABLISH A DISASTER FUND TO BUDGET HONESTLY FOR CATASTROPHES. Other Information:
Restoring fiscal discipline requires honest budgeting. Any given disaster may itself be unpredictable, but the need to pay
for some level of disaster relief is not. Yet federal budgets rarely set aside adequate resources in anticipation of such
disasters, and instead rely on emergency supplemental funding requests. The Commission plan explicitly sets aside funds for
disaster relief and establishes stricter parameters for the use of these funds. The disaster fund budget authority (BA) will
be limited to the rolling average of disaster spending in the most recent 10 years, excluding the highest and lowest year.
Any unused budget authority will be rolled forward to increase the disaster fund BA available in the following year. Any spending
above the disaster fund limit must be offset with reductions in spending or subject to a 60-vote point of order (and all other
requirements established for regular emergency spending). The Commission recommends codifying a strict definition of what
qualifies as a disaster, and requiring Congress and the President to separately designate spending as an emergency and as
necessary for the purposes of disaster response. To keep Congress accountable and encourage transparency, the Commission also
recommends the establishment of a searchable online database of all disaster spending, similar to that found on the Recovery.gov
website, to be maintained by the Government Accountability Office and operational by January 1, 2012.
Indicator(s):
|
