After weeks of nonstop coverage of massive hurricanes, the blame game has only begun, beginning with climate change and unregulated growth — for good reason. But the situation would not be nearly so dire without decades of well-intentioned but deeply flawed federal programs.

It was impossible to purchase insurance policies to cover floods until 1895. This offered some protection until 1927, when the Mississippi River overflowed its banks across several states. Firms walked away from the business entirely.

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As historian Michele Landis Dauber has shown, the idea of “disaster relief” — federal aid for people caught up in catastrophes like floods — had become an uncontroversial prerogative of the national government beginning in the 19th century. After floods devastated areas along the Rio Grande in 1897, Joseph Cannon, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, endorsed disaster relief, arguing that “in matters of this kind, involving the appropriation of money, Congress has unlimited power.”