The White House last week requested $60 billion in federal disaster relief to rebuild the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy, but some Republicans are again threatening to hold disaster relief funding hostage unless it is offset by other budget cuts.
A day after Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) called disaster relief for Hurricane Sandy “wasteful spending,” Reps. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Steve King (R-IA), Raul Labrador (R-ID), and Jeff Landry (R-LA), all from the more conservative wing of the House GOP, told The Hill that they will demand offsets for disaster spending:
Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), who sits on the Appropriations Committee, said she will need to see offsets on Wednesday as did Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho).
“We have these emergencies every year and we should prepare for that in our budget,” Labrador said.
“No pun intended, we should have a rainy day fund,” Rep. Jeff Landry (R-La.) said.
Midwestern House nutjobs telling the East Coast to go to hell. Seems like something totally moderate and not at all political. I'm sure this is President Obama's fault too.
And let's remember that Republicans love to watch disaster areas and the people in them suffer.
House Republicans also cut disaster relief funding in a 2011 spending measure and cut it this year to preserve military spending. The GOP also reneged on a deal it struck with Democrats to make emergency disaster relief funding easier in the future.
Of course they did. Disaster relief might make people grateful for federal government or something, and we can't have that. Time to make sure that when disaster strikes, Americans know that government helping out their fellow citizens is a zero-sum game where helping people must be punished by taking things from the rest of us.
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