Hurricane Sandy funds blocked. Local Republicans Rip John Boehner
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Northeastern Republicans, long outnumbered and overshadowed in their own party nationally, erupted in fury on Wednesday after the Republican-controlled House of Representatives blocked a measure that sought to provide billions of dollars in aid to New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and other states pummeled by Hurricane Sandy.
The depth of the anger was extraordinary and exceedingly personal, with one Republican after another venting their outrage at one man in particular, Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, who quietly moved to keep the bill from coming to the floor early Wednesday morning after a raucous marathon session on fiscal issues.
Representative Michael G. Grimm, a Republican whose Staten Island district was among the hardest hit, threatened not to vote for Mr. Boehner in the election for speaker this week. Representative Peter T. King, a Long Island Republican whose constituents also suffered huge losses in the storm, urged New York’s well-heeled donor community not to contribute to Mr. Boehner’s Republican majority.
Boehner seemed to commit to bringing the funding bill to the floor, but Chris Christie sounds pissed.
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After finally getting through to Mr. Boehner on Wednesday morning, Mr. Christie expressed doubt in the speaker’s word in his characteristically blunt way.
“I’m not going to get into the specifics of what I discussed with John Boehner today,” he told reporters in New Jersey. “But what I will tell you is there is no reason at the moment for me to believe anything they tell me. Because they have been telling me stuff for weeks, and they didn’t deliver.”
NY Times Editorial
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Mr. Boehner had promised to allow the House to vote this week on a $60.4 billion aid package that easily passed the Senate. But he reneged while trying to get out of the way of a final agreement on the fiscal cliff. Now the relief effort will have to begin again with the incoming Congress, and that means more time wasted and possibly less help for those who need it.
Whether Mr. Boehner can revive the Senate package in a few weeks, as now promised, is uncertain, because it’s not clear whether he actually leads the right-dominated Republican caucus anymore. House Republicans are now looking at a patchwork response, starting with a $9 billion down payment mostly for flood insurance. The rest, if it comes at all, would come in other measures.
It has been more than 66 days since Hurricane Sandy slammed into New York and New Jersey killing more than 130 people and causing an estimated $82 billion in damage. Within 10 days after Hurricane Katrina flooded the Gulf Coast in 2005, Washington agreed on more than $60 billion in aid with more to come.
Betrayal.
Foulest betrayal. John Boehner’s word is dirt — and his fellow Republicans’ bond with Americans in need is lower than that.
The House Speaker promised, 11 ways to Sunday, that he would bring a vote on 60 billion in vital, urgent aid to help New York, New Jersey and Connecticut recover and rebuild in the wake of one of the worst natural disasters ever to hit this country.
He turned his back. He broke his commitment.
The plan was to consider the aid in two parts, to help aid the passage of the total.
They didn’t bring either part to the floor. They must take us for fools.
Like pouting 4-year-olds, the Republican leadership, smarting from the loss over the fiscal cliff fight, turned out the lights — even as representatives from affected areas desperately pleaded for the promised action.
This is what it has come to: So poisoned, so blinded by partisanship are House Republicans that they have turned a literal deaf ear to their fellow Americans in their hour of deepest need.
Re: Hurricane Sandy funds blocked. Local Republicans Rip John Boehner
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Originally Posted by rezznor
i'm pretty sure Bush was blamed for his emergency response, not the financial aid. Congress controls the purse springs, not the President.
True but presidents are blamed for what Congress does as well.
Katrina was a shitstorm (again, much worse than Sandy so you can't really compare the two). Cant really blame anybody for that response. Plus Louisiana is a terribly run state. The northeast is held together a lot better than south louisiana.
Hurricane Sandy funds blocked. Local Republicans Rip John Boehner
