Damage estimates for Hurricane Sandy have crept up to about $50 billion, while economists are estimating that the storm could knock more than half a percentage point off of fourth-quarter economic growth. But other economic effects could also come to light.

As Sheila Bapat at RH Reality Check noted, research indicates that after Hurricane Katrina, women’s employment fell in New Orleans while the wage gap widened:

Hurricane Katrina is believed by some to have hurt New Orleans women’s economic status in the years that followed — specifically women’s workforce participation and the gender gap in wages. Tulane University’s Newcomb College Center for Research on Women published a report in December 2008 that primarily evaluates United States Census Bureau data from the two years following Katrina, showing that post-Katrina labor force participation rates dropped more for women than it did for men (-6.6 percent for females; -3.8 percent for males in 2007).

And a year after Hurricane Katrina, the average earnings of women of color declined as well. The Tulane report notes that “the median earnings of White, Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino men increased. In contrast, only the average earnings of White women showed a slight increase; the median earnings of Black/ African American women and Hispanic/Latinas fell.”

The Tulane report explains that barriers to women’s employment—including lack of schools, childcare facilities, housing and public transportation—magnified in post-storm New Orleans, and may have resulted in drops in both workforce participation and wages.

According to the Tulane report, labor shortages in the city should have created favorable wage conditions. However, women still lost ground:

Labor shortages in New Orleans following Katrina created a favorable bargaining position for workers to negotiate higher wages. However, these higher wages have not accrued to women workers whose wages on average increased by just 3.7 percent between 2005 and 2007. An inflation rate of 6.1 percent in the same time period basically eliminated any possible gain.10 Moreover, while the median earnings for all women increased slightly, the average earnings for White women dropped 5.2 percent, from $39,988 in 2005 to $37,916 in 2007, while the median earnings of Black/African American women dropped 3.3 percent, from $24,037 in 2005 to $23,240 in 2007.

Obviously, Hurricane Sandy was no Katrina. But populations that are already economically disadvantaged are more likely to lose ground due to a hurricane or other natural disaster, and Tulane’s report shows that women struggling to close the pay gap may be no exception.

Current House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer “serve the banks” Bachus (R-AL) will have to give up his gavel in the next Congress due to committee term limits. His likely replacement is Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX).

Acknowledging that Hensarling will hold the reins, banks and other financial firms are pouring money into his campaign coffers, despite the extremely safe Republican district in which he is running:

Campaign money has flowed Hensarling’s way, much of it from insurance companies, securities brokers, investment firms and banks. Together, employees of those industries or their political action committees have donated $630,447 to his campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Hensarling’s fundraising haul this year is 66 percent more than he received in 2010, when Republicans surged to win control of the House. [...]

Separately, Hensarling has raised $967,421 for his political action committee, another source of money to donate to Republicans. JPMorgan Chase is the largest source of donations to Hensarling’s leadership PAC. Other major donors include hedge fund Mason Capital Management and Bank of America.

The financial sector is far and away Hensarling’s largest contributor, giving him $1.6 million overall in this cycle alone. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, his next largest set of contributors — “miscellaneous business” — gave him $232,000.

As Financial Services Committee Chairman, Hensarling can be expected to continue the House Republican assault on the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Hensarling was a staunch opponent of Dodd-Frank when the law was being debated, and particularly the law’s creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He also called a tax on big banks “frankly lunacy.” Now he is poised to be the big banks’ top man on the Financial Services Committee as it attempts to cripple Dodd-Frank.

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued a report in September that showed that cutting tax rates for the wealthiest Americans did not spur economic or job growth, refuting a key Republican justification for the party’s continued obsession with maintaining the tax cuts for the wealthy they passed in 2003. But when Senate Republicans aired seemingly minor complaints about it, the agency quietly withdrew the report, even as its economic team advised it to stand firm.

The report, as ThinkProgress reported in September, found that tax cuts for the rich spurred income inequality, not economic growth. “There is not conclusive evidence, however, to substantiate a clear relationship between the 65-year steady reduction in the top tax rates and economic growth,” the report stated. “However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution.”

The withdrawal came after Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) aired minor quibbles about language the report used that he viewed as “politically freighted,” the New York Times reports:

Senate Republican aides said they protested both the tone of the report and its findings. Aides to Mr. McConnell presented a bill of particulars to the research service that included objections to the use of the term “Bush tax cuts” and the report’s reference to “tax cuts for the rich,” which Republicans contended was politically freighted.

Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee also aired methodological questions about the study, a spokesperson told the New York Times. But a Times source inside the CRS said that the report was pulled even as its top economic team, including the study’s author, stood by its finding. Outside economists, like Vice President Biden’s former adviser Jared Bernstein, said the study was methodologically sound and that the GOP attack on it “sounds to me like a complete political hit job.”

Despite Republican efforts to block the findings of the CRS study, others have shown similar results. Even Republicans have admitted in the past that the Bush tax cuts didn’t spur the job and economic growth the party promised, and if nonpartisan studies aren’t enough, history makes the same case. Since Republicans began instituting supply-side policies under President Reagan, growth has lagged and income inequality has surged as the wealthiest Americans make more money while paying less in taxes.

The federal government is likely to hit its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit by the end of the year, the Treasury Department announced this week. Even if Treasury utilizes accounting methods to give Congress more time to raise the debt ceiling, the debt limit will be reached in the opening month of 2013. At the same time, the country is poised to hit the so-called “fiscal cliff,” the automatic spending cuts and tax increases that are scheduled for the end of the year.

That could result in another debt ceiling-related disaster, much like the one that brought the U.S. to the brink of default in the summer of 2011. That debt limit fight, brought on by Republicans who demanded spending cuts equal to the amount of the increase in the nation’s borrowing limit, led to the nation’s first-ever credit downgrade, hampered economic and job growth, and put in place the “fiscal cliff” that now threatens the country’s economic recovery. Here’s a reminder of what happened when the GOP took the debt limit hostage in 2011:

Led to a credit downgrade: The U.S. credit rating was downgraded for the first time in history in August 2011, and the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s repeatedly cited the Republicans’ refusal to consider tax increases in their decision to lower the rating.

Hurt the economy: The debt fight and the uncertainty around it stunted economic growth at a time when the nation was limping through an economic recovery. The stock market fell 581 points in the final week of July and another 1,300 points in the beginning of August, immediately after a deal was reached. As Scott Lilly from the Center for American Progress wrote at the time, economic analysts suggested that the policy uncertainty caused by the debt fight may have cost the U.S. more than a million jobs and reduced economic output by 2 percent. Monthly job growth was cut in half during the three-month impasse, and “employment is likely still below where it would otherwise have been,” according to economists Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson. On top of that, Treasury estimated that the debt fight increased borrowing costs by at least $1.3 billion.

Created the “fiscal cliff”: The “fiscal cliff” was spawned in part by the debt ceiling debacle and Republicans’ refusal to raise revenues. The deal that ultimately raised the debt ceiling created a “supercommittee” tasked with negotiating a long-term debt reduction plan. That committee predictably failed when Republican members walked away from the table because Democrats insisted that revenues be a part of any deal, and that failure triggered sequestration, the spending cuts that now make up a significant portion of the fiscal cliff.

Analysis has already shown that the fiscal cliff would trigger a larger dose of austerity than even Europe’s plagued economies have pursued in recent years. Now, negotiations to avoid it are almost sure coincide with negotiations to raise the debt ceiling, creating a disaster scenario that could have perilous effects for the nation’s economic recovery.

Fox News’ John Stossel railed against the National Flood Insurance Program during an appearance on Fox & Friends on Thursday, blaming the government for encouraging people to build homes in high-risk areas and arguing that private companies should take over the practice.

During the segment, Stossel showed pictures of his own beach front property and explained that while he supported repealing program, he did purchase its coverage and planned to collect its benefits. The contradictory position stumped conservative guest host Peter Johnson Jr,. who couldn’t understand why the longtime libertarian would voluntarily benefit from a governemnt program he opposes:

PETER JOHNSON JR: Wait a second. That are not on the beach that, are not on river fronts that are blocks in that never anticipated that the ocean would come, that the bay would come. They paid their premiums. They’re not rich people like you were. If you’re so rich, why don’t you give the money back? [...]

STOSSEL: Why was the federal government selling it? I blame the politicians. We don’t have special car insurance for Lindsay Lohan. … I paid the premium. I’m going to take the money. Of course you’re going to take the money. [...]

STEVE DOOCY (HOST): You know John, I know you collected three times from the federal government, it was an absolutely great deal…

Watch it:

The federal government established the National Flood Insurance Program in 1968, after private insurers deemed the peril of flood “uninsurable.” The NFIP provides direct coverage for properties and contracts with some 90 private insurers, who mostly service insured properties but bear no insurance risk.

Private insurers were always reluctant to cover floods, noting that they couldn’t possibly “earn excess premiums to cover their cost of capital (they have to pre-fund losses), whereas the U.S. government can easily borrow money to cover catastrophic flood events after they occur.” Unlike private companies, the government can also require homeowners in flood hazard areas to purchase insurance, thus mitigating the problem of adverse selection, wherein only high-risk homeowners buy coverage.

The program has failed to discourage construction in storm-vulnerable areas — it had required county and local governments “to enact zoning and building rules to reduce construction in flood-prone areas” — and in some cases even “paid to have some homes rebuilt multiple times.” Stossel’s beach front house has been rebuilt at least three times– much of it using the federal dollars that he is paid to oppose on television.

While governors across the country have praised the federal government’s rapid response to Hurricane Sandy, Fox News sought to remind viewers of the evils of Washington, criticizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for “printing money” and relying on China to fund relief for victims of the storm.

On Thursday, the hosts of Fox & Friends argued that Americans affected by the hurricane could turn to private insurers for help and suggested that hurricane relief could be left to the states:

GRETCHEN CARLSON (HOST): There is an argument about federal versus state. I mean, some people have said the states should be in charge of some of this relief money, so you don’t have to go and request to the federal. I mean, I understand why you have to go before Congress, because otherwise you could have a situation where you’re giving out money willy nilly.

PETER JOHNSON (GUEST HOST): In essence, FEMA has an ability to print money. And as we were talking about before, Steve, who in the end will be paying for our flood damage in the short-term? Who will be putting up the dollars? Will China? Will we be becoming more indebted to China as a result of our floods on our coast?

STEVE DOOCY (HOST): That’s right. It’s never free money. You know, Congress can say okay, we’re going to come up with the dough and here is the thing, FEMA has this gigantic program with over a trillion dollars worth of property insured, but they only got $3 billion in the bank. That’s crazy. But because we’ve got such a gigantic deficit right now, Peter, you’re exactly right. If the Congress says okay, let’s put more money in the ’till for FEMA, that money is probably going to be borrowed from China.

Watch it:

FEMA estimates it has enough funds for disaster aid, but it’s unclear if the agency’s federal flood insurance program will be able to provide for the flood damage caused by the storm (private insurers typically don’t cover flooding.) FEMA owes $18 billion to the Treasury Department from Hurricane Katrina, but may have immediate access to $3.8 billion. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA) also plans to introduce legislation “to provide $12 billion in new emergency assistance funds.”

But Fox News is arguing that the federal government is overplaying its hand and should leave recovery to the states, local governments, and private entities. FEMA director Craig Fugate has indeed embraced a “whole community approach to emergency management nationally,” recognizing that “all aspects of a community (volunteer, faith, and community-based organizations, the private sector, and the public, including survivors themselves) – not just the government – to effectively prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate against any disaster.” And while all parties play an important role in relief, only the federal government can coordinate and organize disaster relief that spans across state lines and inflicts billions of dollars in damage.