Did Hurricane Sandy save Obamacare? How disaster relief justifies the welfare state.

• Author: Farber, Dan
• Position: The Sympathetic State: Disaster Relief and the Origins of the American Welfare State - Book review

The Sympathetic State: Disaster Relief and the Origins of the American Welfare State

by Michael Landis Dauber

University of Chicago Press, 378 pp.

Among the notable events of 2012 were Hurricane Sandy and the Supreme Court decision upholding Obamacare. The two did not seem to have much in common. Yet, as it turns out, there is a deep historical linkage between the welfare state (in this case Obamacare), constitutional law (the Supreme Court's decision to uphold that law), and natural disasters (Sandy). In her new book, The Sympathetic State: Disaster Relief and the Origins of the American Welfare State, Michele Landis Dauber, law professor and sociologist at Stanford University, does not discuss these recent events directly, but her research allows us to see some surprising connections.

In upholding the Affordable Health Care Act, Chief Justice John Roberts invoked the clause in the Constitution that empowers Congress to levy taxes and pay debts for the general welfare of the country. The Medicaid provision in the AHCA represents that spending power. Roberts upheld Congress's ability to fund the expansion if states were willing, but said they could not be compelled to participate. The individual mandate, he wrote, was not justified by the commerce clause, but could be considered a valid exercise of the tax power. Thus, federal power to pursue "the general welfare" was the key to upholding the statute.

The AHCA was the most notable expansion of the welfare state in decades. It was no coincidence that it relied on the congressional power to tax and spend for the general welfare. The same powers were used to justify the creation of much of the welfare state during the New Deal, with the general welfare given an equally broad definition. That much is well known. What Dauber adds, however, is evidence that the breadth of these powers was not a New Deal creation. Instead, she argues, the broad conception of the general welfare grew out of the long history of federal disaster relief, which Congress and the public had always viewed as being appropriate for preserving public health and safety. But her evidence sheds new light on how our modern welfare state and our modern views of federalism have evolved in tandem. Indeed, disaster relief provided the first seeds of the welfare state and its constitutional framework.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is a relatively recent creation, but, as Dauber shows, federal disaster assistance...