Louisiana Republicans: This isn’t like Sandy

[Billy Jingo]

Louisiana Republicans: This isn’t like Sandy




Louisiana lawmakers are defending their 2013 votes against aid for Hurricane Sandy relief — even as they request billions of dollars to help their state recover from last month’s floods.

GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy and Republican Reps. John Fleming and Steve Scalise — all of whom voted against the Sandy bill in 2013 — are now asking for more than $2 billion for flood aid for Baton Rouge and other cities in their state.

Fleming and Cassidy say they voted against the $50 billion Sandy bill *because it included $33 billion for programs unrelated to the storm damage. They say the Louisiana request has no such extraneous spending.
Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) formally asked Washington this week to provide up to $2.8 billion in emergency aid after the August floods, which destroyed more than 100,000 homes and killed 13.

The White House mostly supports the effort and formally submitted a request Tuesday for $2.6 billion in emergency spending for the state.

The proposal also has the approval of the congressional delegation, which wrote a letter to the president asking him to remember the state during spending battles between now and the end of the fiscal year, on Sept. 30.

The question now is whether Congress will do anything with the request and if members detect any hypocrisy in funding disaster relief for a state where most members have voted against it in the past.

“I guess there is a certain irony in it, or poetic justice or something, but no, it wouldn’t stop me at all for voting for it,” Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) said.

[scott]

That's usually the reason fiscal conservatives vote against otherwise worthy programs - all the other stuff tacked onto it.

It's also the reason why fiscal liberals tack all that extra stuff onto aid bills - they don't give a shit about those in need if they can't get their pork.

[Djharkavy]

That's usually the reason fiscal conservatives vote against otherwise worthy programs - all the other stuff tacked onto it.

It's also the reason why fiscal liberals tack all that extra stuff onto aid bills - they don't give a shit about those in need if they can't get their pork.

Probably partially true, although I'll bet you will find conservatives tacking their own stuff onto a bill.

It will never happen, but I'd love to see a one bill, one topic rule where all amendments have to be relevant to the main subject of the original bill.

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[Tom Servo]

We've gone through this on a state level recently with the BP settlement money. Several hundred million dollars was at stake and ideally most or all of it should have wound up in Alabama's two coastal counties since we suffered the brunt of the disaster, both ecologically and economically. Instead the greedy pork-loving politicians from the northern part of the state finagled a way to get the money sent to Montgomery, where it could be disbursed across the entire state. At one point, not a single cent of the money would have found its way back to Mobile or Baldwin Counties.

Eventually a “compromise” was reached where we get a chunk of it for a few measly road projects, but the bulk of the money will still go elsewhere, including to shore up the state budget and fund Medicaid gaps. The whole ordeal left a bad taste in the mouths of many junior representatives… Many saying "next time a tornado hits up north, we'll have to reconsider sending money to them because it didn't affect us. Turnabout is fair play."

[scott]

We've gone through this on a state level recently with the BP settlement money. Several hundred million dollars was at stake and ideally most or all of it should have wound up in Alabama's two coastal counties since we suffered the brunt of the disaster, both ecologically and economically. Instead the greedy pork-loving politicians from the northern part of the state finagled a way to get the money sent to Montgomery, where it could be disbursed across the entire state. At one point, not a single cent of the money would have found its way back to Mobile or Baldwin Counties.

Eventually a “compromise” was reached where we get a chunk of it for a few measly road projects, but the bulk of the money will still go elsewhere, including to shore up the state budget and fund Medicaid gaps. The whole ordeal left a bad taste in the mouths of many junior representatives… Many saying "next time a tornado hits up north, we'll have to reconsider sending money to them because it didn't affect us. Turnabout is fair play."

There's that Keynesian Broken Window theory in action.