Still Waiting for Sandy Relief
Republicans haven’t made it easy for the Northeast to get the $60.4 billion in aid it needs to recover from Hurricane Sandy. They have objected to the amount — which is considerably less than the $82 billion requested by the region’s governors — and tried to slash it. They have demanded that $3.4 billion of the aid for flood control be offset by spending cuts in other programs. And in the Senate, as on virtually all bills, they filibustered the aid package proposed by President Obama.
That filibuster was broken last week, allowing the Senate to pass the bill late on Friday. But it is not clear whether the House will even take up the bill in the remaining days of the session. If it does not, that will push desperately needed aid off until the next session of Congress, wasting weeks of time preparing and voting on a fresh bill.
Republican lawmakers in the House have said they only want to support direct repairs to the storm’s damage, rejecting as “stimulus” public works projects designed to reduce the effects of the next hurricane or flood. That’s a shortsighted approach that will eventually cost the government more money.
As it was, just to win enough votes to break the filibuster, Senate Democrats had to allow the $3 billion in flood-reduction money intended for the Northeast to be shared with Gulf-area states hurt by Hurricane Isaac in August. That region clearly has significant flooding risks that were not addressed through the usual appropriations process. But that process no longer exists, because of the extreme level of Congressional dysfunction caused by the Republicans’ constant use of the filibuster and the House’s inexhaustible demands for spending cuts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/opinion/still-waiting-for-hurricane-sandy-relief.html?ref=politics&_r=0
