Federal Disaster Aid
 

Smaller government, no aid (not even for Hurricane Sandy victims), to hell with Obamacare!!!

*Tornado ravages town*

WE NEED AID, DON'T SPEAK OF BUDGETTING NOW!!!

Best laugh I've had all week.

It's easy to laugh at things if you turn them into caricatures first.

Aid is not binary; it violates the small government ethos not one bit to be for federal disaster assistance, because everyone outside of an anarchist acknowledges that there are some things government should do.

Incidentally, nobody opposed aid for Hurricane Sandy; they did, however, oppose specific iterations of the bill laden with spending that had nothing to do with the tragedy. Do you think people should be given a free pass to load those up with pork?

Look, I don't think anyone should be given a free pass for whatever reason. He claims the bill was loaded with unnecessary financial aid in order to carry out whatever they wanted to do with it and was irrelevant to the disaster.

I gotta ask though, isn't that due to FEMA's topdown approach more so than anyone else's fault?

Not sure I understand the question; I don't think FEMA's organizational structure has anything to do with whatever spending projects end up attached to federal aid bills, unless you're saying that the mere fact that it's federal in scope opens it up to this sort of grandstanding. If so, I'd agree, but that wouldn't absolve the person who put it there. You'd still blame someone for stealing your car, even if you left the keys in it.

The real problem is that it's just really, really easy to demagogue these things. You hang some sketchy spending on a disaster bill and then pillory anyone who dares to object to it. But obviously, somebody's gotta stand up to this stuff so that tragedies don't become a free pass to shove spending through Congress, even if it means the meme of the heartless conservative gets reinforced. That's just the cost of being the grownup in the room.

That's exactly what I mean. Why shouldn't your states be responsible for disaster aid? The way I understand it, disaster aid is essentially nationalized. So what incentives do the states have to really scrutinize the effectiveness of disaster efforts? It decreases them completely, and if states were actually responsible, it would be the opposite.

I think that under the kind of arrangement you guys have, it offers states an incentive to NOT keep their financial house in order. They would think of 'relief aid' in completely different terms. But what you have going on now, opens the door to this kind of 'abuse' of the system.

Naturally, the idea raised above (i.e. making states responsible for disaster aid) will never happen. States don't wanna give up the money.

*****, that previous shout looks really hard to understand. Meh, it's late here and I'm getting tired.

I agree. I think you can make an argument for disaster aid being federal, but most of the arguments for it have alternative solutions that don't involve that kind of top-down approach (like temporary federal loans, for example).

I thought you were mocking people for hypocrisy, but perhaps I misunderstood; sounds now like you were mocking them for backing down.

Yes, I am mocking them for the latter reason. They need to be even more radical as far as I'm concerned. I probably don't fully understand the mechanisms of your system, but it sounds like a pretty perverse one in terms of the opportunities it presents to make abuse of it. I'm not saying my idea is the best or only suitable alternative, but to me, it seems like a better one for sure.

That is not to say that politicians can't be hypocrits. Quite the opposite.

You're wrong.

You mistated Tea Party oppositon to aid for Hurricane Sandy and you know it.

Very sad,

What's sad is that you would accuse me of lying with zero evidence. I never knowingly exclude things like that. Ever. An unqualified "screw you" for suggesting otherwise.

I'm referring (and I assumed Brodinski was referring) specifically to Senator Inhofe's recent comments, which have been in the news recently. I don't know if you can dig up a couple of isolated libertarian Congressional freshmen who opposed it on more basic grounds, but I'm not aware of any offhand.

Your answer was not true and you know it.

You show me where in the bill that ultimately passed Congress with a majority of House Republicans opposed had the pork you state. It was stripped from the bill in the House.

In the Senate, the stuff you are calling pork that was put in and taken out in the House bill was largely done to get Republican senator's votes that helped their state.

The real issue was budget offsets, not pork. But both Oklahoma senators have had a long hostility to Fema funding when even offsets were not an issue especially Coburn.

Gladly: FBI salaries, AMTRAK upgrades, general highway repairs not relegated to the affected areas. And tons more things that may be worth funding, but are not emergency costs and thus shouldn't be in an emergency spending bill, which circumvents normal budget caps. And this is after Republicans kicked up a fuss to get the more ridiculous items removed.

I'll just wait quietly for my apology.

Actually, no. I'm not going to wait quietly.

Even if I weren't right about this (and I damn well am), it's pretty freakin' low to suggest that I knew better and said otherwise, which is basically just calling me a bald-faced liar. This is particularly galling, because I rarely see fit to question your basic honesty, despite a littany of errors so blatant and careless that they would give anyone ample reason to doubt your intentions. How'd you like to run through them, defending your integrity with each? Think that'll go well?

Some pork. All the language says the the costs you mention are directly related related to Hurricane Sandy. And where is Bin Laden? You know you are bull crapping this. I have a quote from Congressman King that says the issue was not pork when the bill came up for a vote in the House. I didn't hear a big to do at the time about pork and neither did you. The issue being raised was budget offsets.

“There was never any conversation on the merits about the bill or the funding or the program or the use,â€� Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at his cabinet meeting on Wednesday morning. “It was purely the politics of the way it played out. It was all politics. And it was all Republican politics on the House side. And not our Republicans, not our delegation. I hadn’t had a single question from anyone on any item in the package. There was no substantive issue.â€�

Rep. Peter King, the state’s longest-serving Republican in Congress, echoed Cuomo as he ripped into his colleagues on Wednesday for failing to allow a vote on the measure.

“Gov. Christie, Gov. Cuomo, Mayor Bloomberg all submitted absolute documentation,â€� King said on the House floor. “When we asked is anything else required, they said, ‘No, you’ve given us all we need.’ When the bill came from the Senate, we were told there was some pork in the bill. That was taken out of the bill. The bill that was going to voted on the House floor was exactly in compliance with what the Republican leadership asked us to do.â€�

So paying down Amtrak's operating losses is directly related to Hurricane Sandy? How about funds given to departments far in excess of what was requested, with no corresponding stipulations that it be relegated to the effected area? And maybe you'd like to argue that the funds specifically set aside for future disaster declarations are somehow directly related to Sandy, too.

You really don't seem to understand what pork is. It's not just bridges to nowhere. It's also smuggling in larger general operating budgets without stipulations about how it gets spent to circumvent normal budget caps.

I didn't see anything you are bringing up in the bill you posted so I have no idea if what you are saying is accurate. Based on your spinning so far and deceptive argument about pork being the reason there was sucb opposition by Repubs, which I know is false, I am not taking what you say at face value. The opposition stated at the time regarding the House bill was budget offsets, not pork. Supposedly, if they found the cuts to satisfy the the Republicans who voted against it, they would have voted for it despite waht you say is pork. I have quotes that what was identified as pork in the Senate bill was stripped from the House bill. Why are you finding it so hard to admit what you know is true, pork was not the reason so many Republicans opposed the bill? Why do you want to go down that road?Everybody following it knows the issue given at the time was budget offsets.

First, budget offsets and pork aren't mutually exclusive.

Second, I was talking specifically with Inhofe in mind, who I assumed was the target of Brodinski's ridicule. As I already said.

Third, I even said specific iterations of the bill, so when you talk about pork being stripped from an earlier version of it, you're actually confirming my point, even though you don't even seem to realize it.

And fourth, you appear to be using a very strict definition of pork that arbitrarily excludes general budget increases without oversight. Please, explain to me why there would be any funding provisions that do not stipulate acceptable usage, if the bill is supposed to be targeted towards specific disaster relief. I'd love to hear why.

Frozen under pressure.