As I mentioned last week, ballooning climate disasters are putting pressure on the Insurance industry.

And, it turns out, ballooning the deficit, as well.

The Hill:

“Disasters aren’t anomalies — they are unfortunately a sure thing, and they are getting more costly every year,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

She says funding to pay for the disasters should be part of a regular budget process, or the nation will unsustainably add to its debt.

Congress approved $15 billion last September to help pay for the damages from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. The following month, after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, it approved another $36.5 billion. It went on to approve about $90 billion of aid in additional aid in February.

The total of $140 billion over a six-month period is nearly triple the amount appropriated for the Department of Homeland Security, and about double the Education Department’s budget.

It also amounts to 18 percent of the total deficit for fiscal year 2018.

Conservatives have long argued that disaster relief should be offset with spending cuts.

“Hurricane aid shouldn’t be added to the debt. That’s akin to going to the Emergency Room after an injury, putting the charges on a credit card, and then pretending that the Visa bill is never going to arrive,” Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on the subject.

But there are several reasons that the problem is likely to only get worse.

The first is that natural disasters are becoming more frequent and more costly.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Harvey, Irma and Maria were three of the top five most costly hurricanes in the nation’s history, and all of them occurred in just one year.

From 1980 to 2017, there were an average of 6 events each year that wreaked over $1 billion in damage, adjusted for inflation. But from 2013 to 2017, the average was 11.6 events per year. As of last week, 2018 already saw 11 weather events that cost over $1 billion.