Last night, the Senate found the votes to move forward on a motion to proceed for a $6.8 billion disaster relief funding bill. The roll call is here. Republicans Roy Blunt, Scott Brown, Susan Collins, Dean Heller, John Hoeven, Olympia Snowe, Pat Toomey and David Vitter joined all 53 Democrats in supporting. All of these [...]

It was only a matter of time that the Republicans’ newfound desire to lower the volume and not take hostages to achieve their aims would fall apart. We apparently have gotten through the FAA authorization extension, the surface transportation extension, and the debt limit vote without incident, but things are starting to break down. First, [...]

Harry Reid will challenge the ability of Republicans to hold out on disaster relief spending against the wishes of GOP Governors and representatives in the region affected by Hurricane Irene, by introducing a $6 billion bill without offsets to replenish FEMA accounts for fiscal year 2012. The Senate action would replenish depleted accounts at the [...]

The White House has requested $5.2 billion in disaster relief funds, a number that does not include damages caused by Hurricane Irene last week. Because of a provision tucked into the debt limit deal, Congress can go beyong the self-imposed spending cap by up to $11 billion for disaster relief, without offsets. So far, they [...]

The fight over whether to offset emergency spending on disaster relief, as Eric Cantor wants, could end up being the most interesting upcoming battle in Congress. The lines aren’t drawn in an entirely partisan way on this one. In particular, Republican Governors in the states affected want to see that disaster relief, and don’t care [...]

There’s an economic theory that breaking windows is likely to provide a short-term boost to the economy, because the windows will have to be replaced, adding to window manufacturing and shipping and sales. Some are trying to associate that theory to Hurricane Irene, saying that in the long run, the economy will benefit from cleanup [...]

The hurricane which became tropical storm Irene ended up doing more damage with its precipitation than it did with its winds. In parts of the East Coast, August was already the rainiest month on record prior to the storm. So the waterways were swelled and more prone to flooding. Apparently Vermont got some of the [...]

The best-case scenario for Hurricane Earl was that it would move out to sea and only affect the eastern seaboard with rip currents and maybe a slight sprinkling of rain. But the storm appears to have pushed enough to the west to now threaten parts of the East Coast with much more than that. As [...]

As predicted by meteorologists, Hurricane Earl, now at Category 4 strength, has now turned north and west from Puerto Rico and remains on track to slam into the Eastern seaboard. It could increase in wind speed over the open Atlantic, which means it could be a pretty large storm by the time it reaches the [...]

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