I've said before on IRC, I don't like this bill. It's a HUGE amount of money and it seems to me FAR in disproportion to the potential damages; construction of barriers, dams, and seawalls can only mitigate (and depending on the disaster only mitigate slightly) the damage from storm surge, not eliminate it. It'd be the Army Corp of Engineers who would get this money. Out of curiosity, I looked up the current US Army Corp of Engineers budget allotment. Here's what I found:
While admittedly this is from Trump's budget and is slightly reduced from the $4.732 billion from last year, you're still talking about increasing their budget by a factor of 173. I'm all for increasing the ACoE's funding; they do important work and some areas could really benefit. But I'd think even $10 billion would border on unreasonable, let alone $801 billion. Unless I see reputable evidence that these numbers make any kind of sense, I don't see how I can treat this as anything more than a MASSIVE pork scheme.
