Stop spending! Use unspent billions to rebuild after Helene

Our nation is suffering from record spending, debt, and deficits, which have triggered inflation. This is why Treasury yields are spiking even as the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates. Despite the record spending, we won’t have enough money to rebuild the communities devastated by Hurricane Helene without passing a supplemental disaster spending bill that will push us farther into debt. Or is there another option?

Before inflation hit hard, I promised my wife we would remodel our old kitchen. In a sense, I had already appropriated the funds, but inflation crushed our finances before we could spend them. Like any family, we canceled the project and used the money to cover basic expenses. Unlike the federal government, we can’t spend all our savings because we need to reserve them for an emergency.

Shouldn’t it be obvious that the residents of North Carolina deserve priority over Ukraine?

Congress, on the other hand, loves to spend every last penny available, with no regard for the certainty that natural disasters will occur. AccuWeather has already estimated that rebuilding from the hurricane could cost $110 billion. Congress will undoubtedly pass a supplemental spending bill during the lame-duck session, if not sooner, to help those who lost everything — a goal we all support.

But should our government act like any other family and cut wasteful spending to cover the cost of the disaster bill? There’s no better place to start than with unspent appropriated funds.

A major factor bankrupting us is the collection of bills passed under Biden, combined with the trillions in fiscal and monetary spending in the immediate aftermath of COVID. These bills include the 2021 COVID relief bill, the American Rescue Plan; the trillion-dollar infrastructure law of 2021; the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act; and the Green New Deal, known as the Inflation Reduction Act.

How much of that funding has already been spent?

According to a Politico analysis, less than 17% of the $1.1 trillion provided by those laws for direct subsidies on “climate, energy, and infrastructure” had been spent as of April. This means that, even two years after the passage of these bills, roughly $900 billion remained unspent as of this spring.

Sensing the possibility of Trump’s return to office next year, the Biden administration has accelerated the spending rate since April. “The Biden-Harris administration is focused on sprinting through the next few months, with a relentless focus on execution,” said Ali Zaidi, Biden’s climate czar, in an interview with Politico last week. “We’re implementing the largest climate investment in world history and pursuing a regulatory agenda that has secured public health and environmental gains.”

We should be able to find enough unspent funds between all these bills to repurpose and provide sufficient funding for the people of Western North Carolina to rebuild. In fact, despite the Biden administration racing to spend IRA funding, $331 billion, mainly from the infrastructure bill, cannot be spent until future fiscal years and hasn’t been promised to any specific vendor. That amount more than covers the entire cost of the hurricane.

Additionally, as of April, $92 billion in COVID funds remained unspent, with $53 billion yet to be earmarked. Republicans pledged to rescind these funds in the FY 2024 budget but backed down during the final appropriation bill’s passage.

Then consider Ukraine funding. Much of that spending has gone toward weaponry for a war that will not yield positive results for anyone involved, yet funds allocated for the new fiscal year remain unspent. Shouldn’t it be obvious that the residents of North Carolina deserve priority over Ukraine? Shouldn’t we first redirect unspent green energy funds meant for wealthy corporations toward disaster relief?

Democrats argue that these are vital programs, but so is my kitchen remodeling. Just as Americans must prioritize during a crisis, so must the federal government. If they spend all the funding and pass a new disaster bill without offsets, it will burden all Americans with higher prices for essential goods and services.

As for Republicans, if they can’t fight to retract even a small portion of the unspent funds for programs that never should have been funded, what are they campaigning for this November? They have no right to talk about inflation if they can’t use any leverage to enforce modest cost-cutting, which every family does daily.