The Disaster Aid System: How FEMA Rewards Risk
November 20, 2025
29 min
41
Full
4,776 of 4,836
Episode 41 · November 20, 2025
The Disaster Aid System: How FEMA Rewards Risk
0:00 / 29:22
Excerpt playback isn’t available for this episode — use the full-episode link.
Search the Record
Moment search isn’t open for this episode yet
When it opens, you’ll be able to type any phrase and jump straight to the second it was said.
Words Numbers Episodes Around November 20, 2025
Episode 4,776 of 4,836 — walk the feed in the order it was published.
29:22This episodeThe Disaster Aid System: How FEMA Rewards Risk
Summary
FEMA was meant to help only when disasters exceeded state capacity. Yet today it functions primarily as a national subsidy machine, encouraging development in floodplains, bailing out wealthy coastal states, and shifting costs onto taxpayers far from the danger zones. The Cato Institute's Dominik Lett and Chris Edwards discuss how well-intentioned federal aid has created perverse incentives, bureaucratic delays, and a long tail of spending that continues decades after storms like Katrina.<hr /><p style="color: grey; font-size: 0.75em;"> Hosted on Acast. See <a href="https://acast.com/privacy" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: grey;" target="_blank">acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
Episode details and artwork are published by the show’s own feed. Sentinel plays short cited excerpts and links every episode back to its publisher.