Emergency! Warning! Danger!
What do you think of when you think of an emergency? Do you think of an accident? A crisis? Do you think of emergency vehicles racing toward their destination with lights flashing and sirens wailing because time is of the essence? Do you think of emergency response personnel, like firemen, policemen, paramedics, nurses, and doctors, scrambling to address and contain the suddenly developed catastrophe?
Whatever you think of, some elements of the above description are almost certainly a necessary element of any condition in order for it to qualify as an emergency: time must be of the essence and there must be suddenly developed harm to address. Without these elements, where time is a factor and the problem is one which recently and suddenly emerged, even the most horrifying and traumatic events are not emergencies. The root of the word emergency is the same as that of the word “emergent”; if the problem is not an emergency if it has been slowly developing or has existed for some time. Most people thought that Katrina was an emergency at the time but now, more than a year and a half later, it is a “disaster”, not an emergency. Likewise, if the fact that your child has swallowed a harmless piece of candy suddenly emerges, no one is going to jump up and call 911. The situation is not one in which a response is time-critical…
How then, can funding for a War in Iraq properly be called “emergency funding”? On April 3, 2007, President Bush said, “It has now been 57 days since I requested that Congress pass emergency funds for our troops.” http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/04/20070403.html
The war in Iraq has been going on for more than four years… This is not a recently emergent situation by any reasonable definition. Four year old problems are not emergencies. Moreover, anything that you have weeks or months to which to respond is not a credible emergency. Senators don’t have sirens on their cars the way that fire engines do because we don’t consider senators or representatives emergency responders.
Calling this request for money an emergency request is just plain insulting. If the President doesn’t budget the right amount of money to fight this little war through the standard budget request practices, that doesn’t make it an emergency, it makes it a lack of planning. It constitutes an abuse of the Congressional budget oversight process to knowingly leave needed fund out of the scrutinized regular budget just to declare an “emergency” for the needed funds a few months later knowing that the intentionally truncated deadline created thereby will undermine any responsible oversight. This isn’t the fist time either- this joker has pulled this “emergency” funding stunt repeated over the last four years. Would it be wrong for Congress to close this de facto loop-hole by refusing to provide funds for obviously non-emergency situations?
Whatever you think of, some elements of the above description are almost certainly a necessary element of any condition in order for it to qualify as an emergency: time must be of the essence and there must be suddenly developed harm to address. Without these elements, where time is a factor and the problem is one which recently and suddenly emerged, even the most horrifying and traumatic events are not emergencies. The root of the word emergency is the same as that of the word “emergent”; if the problem is not an emergency if it has been slowly developing or has existed for some time. Most people thought that Katrina was an emergency at the time but now, more than a year and a half later, it is a “disaster”, not an emergency. Likewise, if the fact that your child has swallowed a harmless piece of candy suddenly emerges, no one is going to jump up and call 911. The situation is not one in which a response is time-critical…
How then, can funding for a War in Iraq properly be called “emergency funding”? On April 3, 2007, President Bush said, “It has now been 57 days since I requested that Congress pass emergency funds for our troops.” http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/04/20070403.html
The war in Iraq has been going on for more than four years… This is not a recently emergent situation by any reasonable definition. Four year old problems are not emergencies. Moreover, anything that you have weeks or months to which to respond is not a credible emergency. Senators don’t have sirens on their cars the way that fire engines do because we don’t consider senators or representatives emergency responders.
Calling this request for money an emergency request is just plain insulting. If the President doesn’t budget the right amount of money to fight this little war through the standard budget request practices, that doesn’t make it an emergency, it makes it a lack of planning. It constitutes an abuse of the Congressional budget oversight process to knowingly leave needed fund out of the scrutinized regular budget just to declare an “emergency” for the needed funds a few months later knowing that the intentionally truncated deadline created thereby will undermine any responsible oversight. This isn’t the fist time either- this joker has pulled this “emergency” funding stunt repeated over the last four years. Would it be wrong for Congress to close this de facto loop-hole by refusing to provide funds for obviously non-emergency situations?
Labels: emergency funding
posted by Minotaur at 8:24 AM
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