So Hurricane Sandy Recovery Costs = Total Annual New Tax Revenue From Expired Bush Tax Cuts

[Tom Rinaldo]

In a few weeks we will have spent all of our new tax revenue for 2013 dealing with a single weather related emergency. 61 Billion for Sandy times ten comes to 610 Billion Dollars - damn close to the amount of new revenue the fiscal cliff deal is projected to bring into the treasury over the next decade. More frequent Super Storms are forecast to hit the U.S. in coming years due to global climate change. It could be that we just failed to raise the new revenue needed just to pay for all of the weather disasters likely to hit the U.S. over the next ten years if they start becoming annual events. And already Republicans are making their predictable grumbling noises about not appropriating money to respond to national disasters without simultaneously cutting spending somewhere else.

Conservatives insist that we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. Well increasingly it looks like we now face a huge spending problem in part because of their decade long denial of the science of global warming.