After two years, Congress will finally come through for Flint, the Michigan city with poison water in its pipes. House appropriators unveiled a spending package Tuesday that provides millions of taxpayer dollars for the municipality suffering from contaminated drinking water.
The federal government is too late, though. Flint already fixed its own problems. Regardless, the check will soon be in the mail for a problem that’s already been solved.
By Thursday lawmakers are expected to pass a continuing resolution that includes a multimillion-dollar bailout for the middle Michigan city. Of that, $100 million will go toward repairing aqua infrastructure and another $70 million will kick start a $1 billion emergency fund for cities that find themselves in the same boat.
But Michigan doesn’t need the money.
After the fourth round of testing on Friday, researchers again encouraged residents to use city water to wash, clean, and drink. Virginia Tech Professor Marc Edwards, who first discovered dangerous levels of lead, announced that the city was “approaching the end of the public health crisis.”
Flint’s water is safe, Edwards explained, so long as residents use a lead filter (which the state provides citizens for free) when they turn the tap. Pointing to Chicago and Pittsburgh, the professor noted that Flint’s “lead in water levels are not worse than many other older cities in the country.” That hasn’t done much to quell the hysteria or spending though.
Over the course of the last year, millions of state and federal dollars have poured into the city. This year alone, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has signed three state bills (in January, February and June) sending at least $223 million to deal with the water emergency. That’s roughly $5,600 state dollars for each of Flint’s 41,000 households.
That data barely influenced the debate in Washington. When Republicans such as Utah Sen. Mike Lee called on Michigan to fix its own problems, Democrats cried racism. And when the federal government barreled toward a shutdown, they used the crisis to wring additional funding out of an earlier stop-gap spending bill.
Now after a year of back and forth, Flint’s water is safe and the taxpayer’s getting hosed.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
