GOP TO JERSEY SHORE: DROP DEAD
GOP TO JERSEY SHORE: DROP DEAD
History always repeats, doesn't it?
TRENTON – Citing “selfishness” and “duplicity,” an angry and frustrated Gov. Christie blamed a fellow Republican, House Speaker John Boehner, for withholding $60 billion in aid for Sandy victims. “Last night politics was placed before our oath to serve our citizens,” Christie said at news conference carried live on CNN. “For me it was disappointing and disgusting to watch.” Christie said he was assured that the House of Representatives would vote on the Sandy aid package before the current Congress adjourns. But at 11:20 pm last night, he was told Boehner pulled the bill without explanation, and then Boehner wouldn’t take Christie’s four follow-up phone calls. Christie began his remarks by listing the amount of time it took Congress to send aid to victims of other natural disasters – like 10 days for Hurricane Katrina. It's been 66 days since Sandy damaged or destroyed 346,000 homes and sent more than 7,000 people to shelters. OK, so a couple of thoughts. First of all, dissing New York City in 1975 did not end well for Gerald Ford, who lost the presidency the next year to Jimmy Carter by the narrowest of margins. I don't see anything good for the GOP coming out of this. More importantly, it will be interesting to see if last night's Sandy fiasco will ultimately be remembered as the equivalent of Fort Sumter in the long-predicted Republican Party Civil War. Long Island GOP firebrand Rep. Peter King -- who had already broken with the party on gun sanity -- was talking this morning of leaving the party, and Sun Belt versus Rust Belt tensions are clearly festering. It's interesting to note that every Pennsylvania GOP House member -- along with our Republican Sen. Pat Toomey -- voted for the "fiscal cliff" deal that was spurned by the Tea Party. I witnessed the Deep South flip from solidly Democrat to mostly Republican from the 1970s through the '90s, and in fact it peaked during the three years in the early 1980s that I worked in Birmingham. The Deep South had stopped voting Democratic in 1964, after passage of that year's Civil Rights Act (sad, but true) but it took until the 1980s to start electing more Republicans to Congress and the legislature and them by the 1990s you had "Yellow Dog" Democrats like Richard Shelby finally just switching parties. I wonder if you'll start to see the same thing in suburban areas of the Northeast, like Bucks and Delco here, that the GOP will slowly wither.
- What's wrong with that statement? I didn't know there was pork in there until I read the comments.
— LouDiamondPhillipsheadScrewdriver 
@wok- Why is so wrong to expect that only emergency aid be included in a bill called the "Sandy Relief Bill"? What does the fact that pork was loaded into this bill have to do with the Tea Party? I thought we were all tired of the same old, same old way politics (ie you vote for my pork and I'll vote for yours). Has that way of operating the government yielded the kind of government you really want, or is it still the fault of Republicans?— Wiseman6- "What does the fact that pork was loaded into this bill have to do with the Tea Party?" . . . . . The House Tea Party caucus registered $1 billion in earmark requests in 2010 alone, so let's get real. That money for Alaskan and Mississippi fisheries, for instance, coincides with yes votes from Republican senators from those red states. The Senate apparently did what it had to do to pass a filibuster-proof bill to get the job done. Trust me, this is not about the pork for Tea Partiers, it's about the idea of the federal government needing to bail out NY and NJ.
- Wiseman, why didn't Boehner keep his commitment to Governor Christie and bring the bill up for a vote? The Speaker hasn't had a problem with pork-laden bills in the past. Why did the Senate pass it with overwhelming bipartisan support? Why didn't Boehner answer any of the Governor's FOUR calls that night? Think it has anything to do with pacifying the Tea Party caucus? Think it had anything to do with trying to hold onto his Speakership?— wokmaster
- Cantor McFly is rubbing his hind legs waiting for Boehner to get the axe. — The Fundamentals of the Economy are Fine
- The meltdown of the GOP is a glorious site to behold. What's even sweeter is they did this to themselves. Now, let's watch the vultures eat each other.— The Fundamentals of the Economy are Fine
- @wok- Boehner disregarded the 3 day rule in allowing the House to vote on the cr@p "fiscal cliff" legislation. He also disregarded his own rule by bringing it to the floor without majority support of his own the caucus. Why won't Harry Reid bring up any number of House passed legislation for an up or down vote on the Senate floor?
My guess is Boehner was trying to limit the number of cr@p votes for this Congress and left something for the next Congress. The bill will have to be re-drafted from scratch. Maybe the next bill will be 'kosher'....
Look. The fact is that the Senate loaded up the Sandy aid bill with pork completely unrelated to the disaster recovery effort. Then dared the House not to pass it for fear of hurting the poor 1%ers with million dollar beachfront property. Christie's feelings with respect to not getting a call back from Boehner aren't really any of my concern. Chris is a big boy so to speak and will get over it.
Real bona fide aid legislation without all the cr@p would have been brought to a vote and woul have passed easily. Why isn't the vitriol directed where it belongs-- at those that sabotaged the bill with extraneous unrelated spending?
"You never want to let a serious crisis go to waste....and what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before".— Wiseman6 - If my beach house sustained damage from Sandy I would expect to have to deal with my insurance co to repair it - not the gov't.
I see these interviews with people who're unable to live in their homes because of the damage - do they expect the gov't to pay for repairs? I understand the gov't needs the $$ to repair the boardwalk, roads, sewer/water systems... but individuals homes?
— michael_b - Actually, it's the national flood insurance program that's running out of funds, not FEMA emergency repair grants, thus the urgency.
- Hmm.
I wonder if the national flood insurance were a "company" and not a "program" ... would it be running out of funds.— michael_b - Well, in that case, maybe we should let private industry risk and lose THEIR money --- instead of allowing the federal government to act as a money losing insurance company. — michael_b
- @msl- The Senate doing what it had to do is a familiar meme.. Senators Landrieu and Nelson come to mind....
I don't care who put the pork into the bill- Rep, Dem, Tea Party or Blue Dog (if any left), but they are the ones responsible for not getting the aid to NY/NJ/CT. The fact that the pork was loaded into a bill to beat a filibuster would have no bearing on MY vote as a member of the House. Do you always use bad behavior to justify other bad behavior?
If it was an aid bill to help Sandy 1%ers rebuild their million dollar beachfront property, then let's limit its contents to direct immediate need. When these bills get tangled up with all kinds of extraneous spending it muddies the waters so it becomes a vote of the lesser of two evils. Do you want to be on record as voting against aid to Sandy victims or on the record for voting against spending not directly related to the purpose of the bill?
And we wonder how the political system in this country is so screwed up...— Wiseman6 - How bout we start with term limits... and sticking to our old constitution? — michael_b
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