Politics & Power Quote by Bob Ney

A tidy “social contract” is being sketched here, and it’s doing more political work than it first admits. Ney frames disaster insurance not as a handout but as a three-way bargain: individuals pay premiums, localities regulate themselves through building codes, and Washington backstops catastrophe. The intent is defensive and legitimizing. If federal insurance payouts look like government largesse, this sentence rebrands them as earned benefits within a rules-based system.

The subtext is about responsibility, and who gets blamed when the water rises. By emphasizing that “communities agreed to adopt building codes,” Ney quietly shifts part of the moral and financial burden downward. If a town fails to enforce standards, it hasn’t just made a planning mistake; it has broken the deal. That’s a powerful move in American politics, where federal spending is perpetually on trial and “local control” is treated as both virtue and shield.

Contextually, this reads like the rhetoric surrounding the National Flood Insurance Program: a program designed to make the uninsurable insurable, while nudging riskier behavior into something resembling discipline. The sentence’s rhythm matters: it stacks “agreed” three times, turning policy into consent. But that repetition also exposes the fragility of the arrangement. Flood insurance is haunted by mismatched incentives, political pressure to underprice risk, and the reality that climate-driven disasters don’t negotiate. Ney’s construction insists the system is reciprocal; it’s also a subtle warning that reciprocity can be revoked when one party is seen as cheating.