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Hurricane Sandy's Aftermath. Tom's River (NJ) Fire Department personnel on scene - today.
While waiting around for fiscal slope negotiations to conclude, Congress has bided its time with legislation seemingly timed for the holiday travel season. The House gave final approval to a bill that would give the TSA more leeway when screening checked baggage from international airports that is going on to a separate flight in the US. Many passengers will not have to re-check baggage for their connecting flight. The Senate also passed a bill that would route clothing left behind at security checkpoints to homeless military veterans.
Obviously this isn’t quite the stuff of weighty lawmaking, and Congress could be using this lull in the action to work on several critical measures. The Violence Against Women Act needs to be reauthorized (Vice President Biden is working with the House GOP on that). The farm bill must pass, lest we fall off the agricultural cliff. The Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act must be extended, lest we fall off the housing cliff. Postal service reform is desperately needed. You have dozens of federal judicial nominees awaiting confirmation. There are plenty of non-airport travel-related bills requiring attention.
One of the biggest is a $60.4 billion supplemental appropriation for relief from the effects of Hurricane Sandy. After the White House made the request, the Senate introduced a bill, and Harry Reid said it was at the top of his agenda. The Senate put it into a 2013 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs appropriation already passed by the House, allowing the Senate to add the new spending and immediately go to conference, if they pass it. But as expected, the appropriation request is running into trouble in the House.
House lawmakers don’t intend to introduce an emergency funding bill anywhere near as large as the $60 billion the Obama administration is seeking to help rebuild the Northeast after superstorm Sandy, saying the administration hasn’t provided sufficient details to justify spending that amount, two senior GOP aides said Wednesday.
If the Republican-controlled House doesn’t take up the measure this year, it would push debate on a large rebuilding bill into next year — something New York and New Jersey officials have said they want to avoid.
Some conservative lawmakers have said they want to see spending offsets for Sandy relief, but it looks more like a simple slow-walk of the request. All appropriations run out after a continuing resolution expires at the end of March, so maybe Republicans want to delay until then, where they can use that leverage to reduce the request.
At any rate, the idea of penny-pinching when there’s so much need in New York and New Jersey and Connecticut and throughout the East Coast is pretty distasteful. The federal government has consistently appropriated disaster relief throughout the bulk of its history, at least in the post-Gilded Age period. And this is a situation where the timing matters; emergency means emergency.
Photo by Tom’s River (NJ) Fire Department under Creative Commons license.
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If it’s not an emergency for the ruling class, it’s not an emergency. When bank profits suffer, it will be an emergency and help will come quickly and sufficiently.
“The government has plenty of money when the right people need it.” (See, for instance, this, this, this, or this.)
Hmmm–I wonder if Gov. Christie will be as outspoken about Congress not responding to the NJ emergency as he has been on other issues.
I don’t like to spend any energy hating people but the republicans are getting very close to evoking that feeling in me
To understand why Tea Party congressional Republicans are against funding the rebuilding of the Northeast states following Hurricane Sandy is to compare the congressional Republican response after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, one right after the other, devastated several Gulf Coast states in late 2005.
Oh, I see, Red States versus Blue States. Red States get funding after Katrina/Rita (with no oversight, no accountability, double the amount) while Blue-leaning Northeastern States don’t (oversight and accountability demanded, with less than half being requested compared to the appropriation following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita).
Hardcore Republican ideology trumps compassion and common sense (and helping fellow American citizens) every time, even though a large number of Republicans got hit by Hurricane Sandy along with residents who vote Democratic, even though a Republican, Chris Christie, is governor of New Jersey. The congressional Tea Party Republicans are as radical, and rabid, and racist as anyone can get.
How soon those Southern ” debtor state ” politicians get even when they get the shit kicked out of them in an election they spent so much money on. Ya know, money they can’t get from their Big Oil and Gas Masters in the way of regulatory and pollution taxes and user fees. To bad for the rest of us they can’t pay their own way, just once. Can’t we just leave this Southern anchor in the Gulf of Mexico and sail on with Canada? What United States? The Confederacy of Dunces rules the purse they only take from. Disgusting.