Despite my best efforts to point out the reasons why it was a bad idea, the House went right ahead and passed the ridiculously over-priced $50.7 billion Hurricane Sandy relief bill.  Don't count on the Senate to stop it at this point.

Thanks to the 179 Republicans and one Democrat (Rep. Andrew Harris of Maryland) who voted against this monstrosity.  Of course, even the nays were not really standing up for the proposition that the Federal government shouldn't be involved in disaster relief at all.  Instead, for the most part they were trying to establish only either (a) that massive disaster relief expenditures should be offset by cuts somewhere else, or (b) that they shouldn't just vote the maximum amount of every wish list that the governors could come up with, and instead should at most only vote piece by piece for expenditures that could be justified.  

Basically, this bill has a little to do with Hurricane Sandy relief, and a lot to do with bailing out the even bigger disaster of the budgets of New York, New Jersey, and to some degree Connecticut.  There's so much money in this bill that I'll bet it will make the budgets look good for the whole remaining terms of Governors Cuomo and Christie.  As for the 20 or 30 hurricanes in the Gulf that we will have to pay for as our quid pro quo for this one, well that's not Cuomo's or Christie's problem. 

Somewhere out there there must be someone other than myself who has figured out what a terrible idea this Federal disaster relief thing is for New York and New Jersey, but I haven't been able to find it.