Look I live in the Northeast and we haven’t forgotten how we, donor states, were shafted in the “we’re not actually in this all together” Hurricane Sandy Tea Party sweep stakes.
Yes Massachusetts was hit. We were without power for a few days and cooked cleaned and warmed up bathwater all from our charcoal grill (and a huge canning pot full of water). But that was nothing compared to what New Jersey and New York dealt with, as their suffering was compounded and lasted longer because Tea Party Republicans wouldn’t open the federal wallet for weeks to help us/them.
We haven’t forgotten how the majority of taker states decided that our states (mainly donor states) and the suffering of our people would be the crucible upon which they’d satisfy their lust of politics and of cutting spending, instead of being there, no matter the cost — to help, immediately, those affected by a natural disaster.
It’s been amazing to see those in the years since, who voted against aid for New York and New Jersey come hat in hand asking for aid, saying some how it’s all different “now.” (Oklahoma, Texas, to name two)
With the Louisiana floods comes 3 more Tea Party charlatans
The three lawmakers, all Republicans, are Rep. Steve Scalise (currently the House majority whip); Bill Cassidy, who moved up to the Senate last year; and John Fleming. They’re all likely exemplars of another Washington truism: fiscal responsibility is great, until it’s your own district that’s getting fiscally hammered. Then Job One becomes working to “help the residents of the threatened areas in their time of need.” — LA Times
They say it’s different because the money has already been appropriated for this flood, where the money for Sandy was a supplemental.
Scalise and Cassidy said their objection actually had been that the House had failed to offset the Sandy appropriation with federal budget cutbacks elsewhere. “Paying for disasters and being fiscally responsible are not mutually exclusive,” Scalise said at the time.
But they almost certainly knew that their proposed offsets were sure bill-killers: They would have eliminated mass transit subsidies for federal workers and certain agricultural subsidies, among other things. When an amendment to require those offsets was voted down, Scalise, Cassidy and Fleming rejected the $50.5-billion total, including the initial $17-billion piece. — LA Times
But the devastation in Louisiana is going to require more than what has been appropriated. It’s going to require a supplemental to cover the cost of rebuilding. This is exactly what Scalise, Cassidy and Fleming voted down for the victims of Hurricane Sandy.
Will Scalise, and Fleming hold to their same (dickish) line for their state and its suffering the way they did for NY and NJ? Will Karma come back to bite them in the ass?
It’s not like they weren’t warned
Some fellow lawmakers warned them that their position could come back to bite them in a sensitive spot later. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) — who was defeated by Cassidy in 2014 — called the demand for budget offsets “a dangerous precedent” serving only “an extreme, tea party ideology." — LA Times
But we in the North East aren’t assholes (even our Republicans who are assholes in other ways aren’t assholes in this regard) and will vote to keep the people of Louisiana from suffering . . . BUT we will remind them about how the people they sent to Washington screwed us.
Because the north knows, winter is coming, that WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.
The north remembers.