Didn't this guy claim to be a fiscal conservative?

$200 billion. That's 2 followed by eleven zeroes.

Get your checkbook out. That $200 billion, divided by the population of the United States (293,027,571), means that your share to pay is just short of $682.53.

It also means that the government could cut a check to every man, woman, and child evacuated from the storm (the best figure I can find is 1.1 million) for $181,818.18.

Here's my proposal -- cut checks for half that amount, end the operation, and be done with it. Ninety thousand dollars is more than enough to get started on a new life. Those who lost more than ninety thousand dollars in the storm certainly had the means and the opportunity to buy flood insurance. If they didn't do so, it's their fault, not the federal taxpayers'.

Just like it's not the taxpayers' fault that all those people chose to live without flood insurance inside a giant bathtub with water on three sides of it. It's unfortunate that they did so, but unfortunate doesn't make it my fault, or my responsibility to bail out their bad choices.