Republicans Who Voted Against Sandy Aid Ask For Aid To West, Texas After Explosion

[thoughtone]

source: Think Progress



The death toll and injury count in the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion that took place last Wednesday continues to rise, with 35-40 dead and 60 still unaccounted for. Recovering from the disaster will likely take a lot of time and resources, and President Obama has already pledged federal assistance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other agencies.

Some Texas Congressmen have also requested aid to help the victims and the town rebuild. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said he is “working to ensure that all available resources are marshaled to deal with the horrific loss of life and suffering that we’ve seen.” Rep. Bill Flores (R-TX) has said that he, plus Senators Cruz and John Cornyn (R-TX), are working with Congressional leaders to extend necessary assistance. Cornyn has also said there is funding under his subcommittee for chemical site security standards and infrastructure protection.

Yet when Northeast cities needed disaster relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, a storm that killed hundreds, all three Congressmen voted against the aid package:

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz lambasted the Sandy Aid package, voting against the measure in January. Cruz issued a statement explaining that he voted against the aid because it included a number of spending measures that were not related to disaster relief, including “Smithsonian repairs, upgrades to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration airplanes, and more funding for Head Start.” […]

After Flores voted against the Sandy aid package, he justified his vote by saying the package was “too large” and did “more than meet the immediate needs of Sandy victims.”
​

On top of seeking funding for West, Texas, John Cornyn has also requested drought relief and disaster aid for wildfires in the past.

Funding would have also been useful in preventing the blast in the first place. The plant has been victim of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) underfunding, as it hadn’t been inspected since 1985. Yet Flores voted for the 2011 House Republican budget, which would have reduced OSHA by $99 million, and also voted to pass the Budget Control Act, which has also decreased funding for OSHA’s inspections.

 

[Upgrade Dave]

Re: Republicans Who Voted Against Sandy Aid Ask For Aid To West, Texas After Explosio

Not just expected, but widely predicted.

 

[thoughtone]

OK Sen. Inhofe opposed funding for Sandy victims but tornadoes r "totally different"

source: Salon

Inhofe and Coburn: Red state hypocrites

Apparently, we have deserving and undeserving disasters, Oklahoma senators James Inhofe and Tom Coburn explain

Tom Coburn, James Inhofe​

Just a week ago, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe suggested that President Obama might be impeached over the Benghazi non-scandal. Now, Inhofe must watch as Obama declares Inhofe’s state a disaster area and promises Oklahomans “all the resources they need at their disposal.”

Inhofe, of course, believes his state deserves those resources, even though he voted down aid to Hurricane Sandy victims. On MSNBC, Chris Jansing confronted Inhofe about his calling the Sandy aid bill a “slush fund,” and the brazen right-winger insisted the two issues shouldn’t be linked.

“Let’s look at that, that was totally different,” Inhofe told Jansing. “They were getting things — for instance that was supposed to be in New Jersey, they had things in the Virgin Islands, they were fixing roads there, they were putting roofs on houses in Washington, D.C.; everyone was getting in and exploiting the tragedy taking place. That won’t happen in Oklahoma.”

Inhofe’s answer is too dishonest to fully parse. First of all, there was Sandy damage way beyond New Jersey, including in the Caribbean and in Washington, D.C., too. And Inhofe had different objections to the Sandy bill at the time. In a rambling, hard-to-follow Senate floor speech blocking Sandy aid last December, the Oklahoma conservative objected to the bill’s timing — “There’s always a lot of theater right before Christmas time … We shouldn’t be talking about it right before Christmas” — even though it was already going on two months since the storm ravaged the East Coast.

Inhofe was also exercised by the fact that the Sandy bill included what he said was $28 billion for future disasters. But the climate-change denier was particularly outraged that the bill included $3.5 billion to deal with what he called “global warming,” which led to a long rant against cap-and-trade legislation, and then his floor speech unraveled. (Interestingly, Inhofe’s own press operation put the incoherent speech up on YouTube, as though it was a proud moment for the senator.)

Oklahoma’s other GOP senator, Tom Coburn, brags that he’s going to seek tornado relief — but insist that the funding is “offset” by other cuts to the federal budget. Coburn is proud that he’s being consistent by placing the same conditions on disaster aid to his own state as he’s demanded elsewhere. Consistent, maybe — but also fundamentally cruel.

Especially in the wake of the sequester cuts, the notion that the federal budget is larded with easily eliminated spending is ludicrous. Would Coburn like to see more kids thrown out of Head Start? More seniors losing Meals on Wheels? The federal deficit is shrinking faster than at any time since just after World War II, but Coburn is going to insist that someone, somewhere, must lose their federal help so Oklahoma can get it instead.

There’s something so typical about today’s GOP in the way Inhofe can dismiss comparisons between tornado aid and Sandy aid while Coburn grandstands for his long-term demand that new spending, even on disaster relief, must be “offset” by cuts elsewhere. Meanwhile, the notion that a new disaster relief bill should include funding to cope with future disasters isn’t lauded as common sense, it’s derided as pork. Like Inhofe, Coburn objected to the Sandy bill’s including funding for future disaster relief. (It should be noted that Moore, Okla., Rep. Tom Cole, also a Republican, voted for the Sandy aid bill.)

Just as modern conservatism helped create categories of “deserving” and “undeserving” poor, we now apparently have deserving and undeserving disasters. When tragedy strikes, most Americans tend to want to pull together, but many Republicans look to pull us apart, placing their own constituents’ needs above everyone else’s.

 

[QueEx]

Re: OK Sen. Inhofe opposed funding for Sandy victims but tornadoes r "totally differe

Can't wait to see what Coburn and Inhofe will do when the U.S. Senate, led by members from the Sandy-stricken Northeast, vote in favor of relief for victims of the Oklahoma tornado that contains similar resources that Coburn and Inhofe voted against to victims of Hurricane Sandy

Be consistent, and vote against it ???
​

 

[thoughtone]

Re: Republicans Who Voted Against Sandy Aid Ask For Aid To West, Texas After Explosio

source: Think Progress

Colorado House Republicans Unanimously Support Flood Relief, Unanimously Opposed Sandy Aid

As historic floods of “biblical” proportions continue to ravage Colorado, President Obama signed an emergency declaration on Sunday — a move that was encouraged by a bipartisan letter last week from the state’s nine-member Congressional delegation. But the four Republican Congressmen who are now supporting disaster relief for their own state were among those voting earlier this year against the emergency aid funding for Superstorm Sandy victims on the East Coast.

Colorado Republican Reps. Mike Coffman, Cory Gardner, Doug Lamborn, and Scott Tipton joined their delegation in asking the president to send emergency funds to help their constituents combat and recover from the more than 14 inches of rain that have flooded Colorado this month.

All four also signed onto a July 10, 2013 letter from the entire delegation to President Obama asking him for a federal major disaster declaration for summer wildfires. Their request noted that such a declaration would “provide urgently needed resources and support to the state, communities, and especially the families who have been uprooted by these wildfires.”

But back in January, a vote in the House of Representatives provided $50 billion in Sandy relief, yet among those voting against the bill were Coffman, Gardner, Lamborn, and Tipton. Their opposition stemmed, in part, because they we unable to steer some of the Sandy aid to their own state. Though he had himself sought disaster aid after damages from Colorado wildfires in June 2012, Lamborn even voted against a smaller $9 billion emergency Sandy relief bill 11 days earlier.

Though scientists have noted that climate is a key cause of these Colorado floods, Coffman, Gardner, Lamborn, and Tipton are all deniers of climate science.



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[QueEx]

Re: Republicans Who Voted Against Sandy Aid Ask For Aid To West, Texas After Explosio

Consistent and Contradictory.

 

[thoughtone]

Re: Republicans Who Voted Against Sandy Aid Ask For Aid To West, Texas After Explosio

Consistent and Contradictory.

Typical and Hypocrisy.