Thursday, November 1, 2012

Mitt Romney favors...

...privatizing FEMA, or at least returning its function to the states. From a GOP debate earlier last year (my emphasis):

"Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that's even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?"

"Including disaster relief, though?" debate moderator John King asked Romney.

"We cannot -- we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," Romney replied. "It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we'll all be dead and gone before it's paid off. It makes no sense at all."

One thing I've learned is that while something may sound sensible in the abstract, it often doesn't work in reality. 

I wonder how Romney feels about FEMA today?* Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey sure seems to love it.

* The former governor of Massachusetts won't answer any questions on the subject.

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