There’s obviously some political game going on behind the debacle behind the Hurricane Relief bill not be voted after the fiscal cliff bill passed. I can’t quite figure out what the game is, though? Embarrass Boehner and threaten the Speakership?
The House didn’t want to pass a bill raising taxes “to decrease the deficit” and then right after that pass another bill authorizing new spending. Boehner and the leadership figured it would look bad.
My WAG is that it’s a Republican tactic to jerk around Michael Bloomberg and Chris Christie as punishment for not drinking enough Republican partisan Kool Aid.
For at least a year now, the entire set of Repubican lawmakers has been attempting an experiment: how quickly they can manage to earn zero votes in an election. Zero.
Because a goodly percentage of Americans turned out to be dumber than a box of rocks, their experiment has failed, so far. But they will keep trying until they reach their goal.
-
Those states usually vote Democrat anyway, so screw 'em.
-
They think Obama wants the aid package to pass, so they say “no”. If Obama is in favor of kittens, they will start drowning them in sacks.
-
They didn’t understand what the bill was for. That would take readin’ and stuff.
-
According to them, government is ineffective, cumbersome and inefficient. They’re just trying to prove it.
It had to go through the Senate first, didn’t it? Why the focus on the House not rubber stamping it the same week, when it took the Senate two months to get it to them in the first place?
- Screw up the country.
- Say it’s Obama’s fault the country is screwed up.
- Hope nobody notices Step #1.
I dunno. This is their game every day. Doesn’t seem fair to link it to the storm.
No need to elaborate further than this:
Your typical modern Republican politician is a motherfucker.
Genuine Republican statesmen such as Eisenhower and Reagan would never have joined the party in its present form.
Sure, that’s why it was my first guess.
Like the dedicated, professional journalists they are, Fox News has gotten to the bottom of why Boehner cancelled the vote.
Sure, Obama urged Congress to pass a Sandy relief bill. But if he had really wanted to get Congress going, he would have taken hostages or something.
I don’t think the current Republican party would had even allowed them to join or to remain in office for long. Just look at examples like Eisenhower enforcing minority rights and Ronald Reagan for signing to (Horrors!) worldwide efforts to control emissions, like the Montreal Protocol.
I have to wonder where these guys have been these past few years. Especially when Peter King says that abandoning people in need is not a republican value. That got a chuckle from me. From what I’ve seen, republican values include: those people in need better lift themselves by their bootstraps or else get to work decreasing the surplus population. The majority’s rejection of this bill is shocking to nobody who has been paying attention.
I’d like to hope that this will be a wake-up call for some of these guys, but then I’d have to ask: what took so long? Oh that’s right, when it’s you being screwed over, that’s when it becomes important.
The affected states didn’t ask for a specific amount of relief funding until mid-December, by which time the Senate was busy with the fiscal cliff negotiations.
I caught part of a news story this morning that said there were complaints of pork riding this bill. As in non-Sandy related moneys being spent. Does anyone know the details?
These things are never as simple as “lets give x dollars to the victims of a disaster.” Congressmen Tom, Dick and Harry will each add a little language to send some money their way too and if anyone fails to vote for the new, amended bill, well then they just hate America don’t they.
According to the Media Matters article that smapti linked to, the “pork” in the bill was 0.3 of the total spending, most of which was allocated to states affected by other disasters.
Passed the House today, 179 Republicans and 1 Democrat voting against (and notably, was brought to the floor without majority GOP support)
How did this get past the Hastert Rule? Has anyone seen an explanation from the speaker?