I’m a little too old to have the ability to come up with one of those cute tabloid couple names. You know how Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez were Bennifer, and Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were Brangelina? (Note to my millennial editor: Please gut-check that these are actual couple names.*) But I’ve been working on one for our feckless governor: Bill Lee Antoinette.
Why are people worried about having lost their homes and their businesses in the flooding in East Tennessee when they can have interest-free loans? Let them eat cake!
On Thursday, Oct. 10, Gov. Lee took to Twitter/X with the following:
Today, we announced the HEAL Program that will dedicate $100 million to assist East TN communities with recovery in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. These no-interest loans will help impacted counties cover the initial costs of water & wastewater repair & debris removal.
This is one of those things that is so wild on so many levels that I hardly know where to start. People are rightly roasting him in his replies, but y’all … the replies. People are complaining that Lee’s just freely sending money to Ukraine but making loans to the people of Tennessee. Gov. Bill Lee is — and I would have thought this was self-evident — not the president or the U.S. Congress, so he is not sending tax money to Ukraine. Other people were replying by calling him a RINO and saying Tennessee needs to start voting real Republicans into office, or pleading with Ron DiSantis to come save us.
I would have thought that even the most rudimentary understanding of politics in this state would be something like: “Republicans — white, Christian, fiscally conservative, good morals,” and “Democrats — socialist brides of Satan tempting everyone else into sin.” Fiscal conservatism is loaning money instead of giving it. If you vote Republican, you are voting for people who hand out loans instead of grants. (Unless you’re a multinational conglomerate or a football team, obviously. Then you just get the money.) There is no way to vote for someone more conservative than Lee and end up with someone who’s going to pass out money like candy. It’s like digging a hole intending to get to the top of Mt. Everest.
The replies are just a brutal lesson in why we need civics classes in school.
I went and read the governor’s press release about the HEAL program, and it’s also a troubling read. But I want to focus on this part (emphasis theirs):
Work to remove dangerous debris and repair water and wastewater systems must begin immediately. Unfortunately, the damage is too extensive, and expense is too great for local jurisdictions to cover the cost of repairs and wait for FEMA reimbursement.
The HEAL Program allocates $35 million to address water and wastewater system damage across eligible counties. These systems experienced extensive damage in most counties and were destroyed in others. Utilities are central to the health and wellbeing of the Tennesseans living in the affected areas, as well as the first responders and volunteers who are temporarily deployed to help with the rebuilding process. $65 million will be divided equally among eligible economically at-risk and distressed counties to address dangerous debris removal.
Eligible counties may opt-in for the no-interest loans, which are funded by TennCare Shared Savings. Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) will distribute funds accordingly.
Isn’t this just a payday loan? Tennessee will front these counties the money that FEMA will eventually give them, and then the counties will pay back Tennessee with FEMA funds. The state is taking on no risk with these loans. It’s literally just setting itself up as a middle man between counties and the federal government. I can’t put my finger on exactly why this seems shady, but I keep thinking that if my car broke down and it needed a $2,000 repair and one of my friends said they could reimburse me for the cost of the repair, once I had a receipt, and Bill Lee stepped in and was like, “Hey, since your friend is going to give you $2,000 once the repair is done, what if I give you $2,000 now and you just use your friend’s money to reimburse me,” I would feel like there was some kind of scam in there. Especially if he then put out a press release about how much he was helping me. Like, he wasn’t doing anything until there was no financial risk to him, and now he’s the hero?
I don’t know. Maybe this is just how rich people do things.
Then there’s the bit where he’s just going to split the money equally between the eligible counties that opt in. In the press release, Lee names Carter, Claiborne, Cocke, Grainger, Greene, Hamblen, Hawkins, Jefferson, Johnson, Sevier, Sullivan, Unicoi and Washington counties. That’s 13 counties, and if they all opt in, $5 million each for debris removal and $2.7 million for water and sewer repairs.
That sure doesn’t seem like enough. In which case, this clearly wouldn’t even be Tennessee loaning these counties all the money that FEMA’s going to send their way. It’s just money to get started on this stuff with.
Why are these loans? It makes no sense. If we have the money to hand $7.7 million to each of these counties to help, we should give it. What’s the drawback? FEMA might send less? That frees up FEMA money to go to, say, people affected by Hurricane Milton. Or the next natural disaster.
It’s really to our detriment that, in a state as poor as Tennessee, we elect rich people. And, like, I get it that you need a lot of money to run for higher office, which pretty much guarantees that only rich people can do it. But there’s just such a large, large gulf between what actual, regular Tennesseans need and how rich people can even conceive of the problem that it leads to this kind of “let them have loans” nonsense. Bill Lee thinks he’s helping by fronting you FEMA money.
But, man, it’s also obvious that another huge chunk of the problem is that people in this state just don’t know how the various forms of government they live under work, who has which responsibilities, and who does what. We can eventually recover from a natural disaster, but the unnatural disaster of what happens in a democracy when its citizens don’t have even a basic understanding of how their government — which requires their participation — works? I don’t know how we can deal with that ongoing crisis.