The U.S. government spent nearly $62 billion on disaster relief in the two-year period ending Sept. 30, 2012, to help Americans recover from severe storms, droughts, heat waves and wildfires, a new analysis of federal data has found.
The Agriculture Department accounted for more than half of all federal disaster spending for those two years, with $28.2 billion going to the crop insurance program, according to a report by the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, released on Wednesday.
Under the taxpayer-subsidized crop insurance system, the government pays 62 cents of each $1 in premiums and shares losses with insurance companies during catastrophic years, such as the two just past.
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