Hurricane Christie

The governor howls at the Republicans who were trying to help him.

 

By Daniel Henninger
WSJ.com

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was on front pages and TV screens last week when he ripped House Republicans for not passing a Hurricane Sandy relief bill New Year's Day, the same day they were engulfed with the fiscal-cliff tax bill.

"There's only one group to blame for the continued suffering of these innocent victims," said Gov. Christie, "the House majority and their speaker, John Boehner." GOP Congressman Michael Grimm from Staten Island called the non-vote on Sandy "a betrayal," and this being New York-New Jersey, Republican Peter King of Long Island invoked "a knife in the back."

The spectacle was irresistible. The Republican Party, exhausted by the fiscal-cliff fiasco, was hanging on the ropes, and here was party hero Chris Christie flying off the turnbuckles to crush John Boehner.

 

The New York Times pumped the tale of betrayal to the top of its front page. "Fury in G.O.P. as House Stalls Hurricane Aid. Northeast Republicans Lash Out at Boehner." GoogleGOOG +0.04% searchers were directed to "watch Peter King explode at his own party." Make no mistake, Gov. Christie has just delivered his second poison pill to a major GOP candidacy: Any Republican who runs in New York City's mayoral campaign this November will have the governor's GOP-sellout statements thrown in his face.

Problem is, in virtually every respect, the betrayal story is wrong. House Republicans on the Appropriations Committee have been working for weeks to move a ton of money to the devastated Northeast. Indeed, within a day of learning more about this effort, Peter King, no shrinking violet, walked back his initial comments about Mr. Boehner and the party.

But Gov. Christie was back for more Tuesday in his State of the State speech: "New Jersey, both Republicans and Democrats, will never stand silent when our citizens are being short-changed."

How about some facts about politics, federal spending and Sandy relief.

Hurricane Katrina left the impression that the Federal Emergency Management Agency handles all federal disasters. But myriad federal agencies—from the Army Corps of Engineers to the Department of Housing and Urban Development—deal with post-disaster restoration. FEMA mainly addresses the immediate, post-storm needs.

On Dec. 4 the head of FEMA, Craig Fugate, told the House Transportation Committee that his agency had enough cash on hand to disburse aid until spring. If "the continued suffering of these victims" means New Jerseyans need FEMA-type aid yesterday and aren't getting it, Gov. Christie's complaint is with his friend, Barack Obama.

The bill before the House on New Year's Day was for Sandy relief needs through 2013 and beyond. The amount in that bill was $60.4 billion. Short-changed? Some perspective: The Agriculture Department's entire annual budget was $20 billion last year. For Justice, Commerce and Science it was $53 billion and for the State Department, $43.5 billion. Sandy's $60 billion is bigger than an entire federal department.

In November, the Obama Office of Management and Budget sent a letter to the House asking for $60 billion in relief aid. As is its habit, the Obama letter included little guidance on how to allocate the $60 billion among myriad federal agencies. House Appropriations undertook the job of interacting with the Washington bureaucracies on precisely how to allocate all this money.

Republican Committee Chairman Harold Rogers of Kentucky produced a $27 billion supplemental bill of initial commitments, much of it for FEMA when it ran out of money. Republican committee member Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, serving as liaison to his region, amended the Rogers bill to add $33 billion for longer-term reconstruction. That's $60 billion of relief assembled in good faith by Republicans for Gov. Christie and his "knife-in-the-back" political colleagues in the Northeast. The Sandy supplemental the House is scheduled to vote on Tuesday will be smaller; for example, it no longer includes the $9.7 billion flood insurance approved last week.

The federal government will spend billions repairing Sandy's damage, as it did for the South after Katrina and for the Midwest after its floods and recent drought. And every politician from Cape May to Connecticut will take credit for obtaining those billions in federal aid.

But it's hard to miss the irony of Sandy's $60 billion getting tangled up in the fiscal-cliff vote, whose reason for being is the U.S.'s new annual deficits of $1 trillion, which equals nearly 17 Sandy bills. And fuhgeddabout the entitlements. Where does all this come from?

Chris Christie's efforts to pull New Jersey back from its cliff and restore economic growth have been the basis for his aggressive governing style. Then Sandy hit New Jersey and New York, states whose public "commitments" could barely be supported on a sunny day. Now a widely admired governor's politics is being transformed into something pretty run-of-the mill.

People knocked flat by natural disasters deserve support from citizens who've had no such misfortune. In the U.S., we assume that's always possible. It still is. On current course, though, that assumption may start to break.

Write to henninger@wsj.com