Division Among GOP About Hurricane Katrina Spending
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Economy, General Politics, Hurricane KatrinaThis is to be expected. Republicans are trying to reclaim their fiscally responsible past, and the backlash against $200 billion in aid, with no budget cuts in site, is palpable.
From the NY Times:
One fiscal conservative, Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, said Thursday, “I don’t believe that everything that should happen in Louisiana should be paid for by the rest of the country. I believe there are certain responsibilities that are due the people of Louisiana.”Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, called for restoring “sanity” to the federal recovery effort. Congress has approved $62 billion, mostly to cover costs already incurred, and the price tag is rising. The House and Senate approved tax relief Thursday at an estimated cost of more than $5 billion on top of $3.5 billion in housing vouchers approved by the Senate on Wednesday.
“We know we need to help, but throwing more and more money without accountability at this is not going to solve the problem,” Mr. DeMint said.
And more…
“There has never been a time where there is more total spending and more wasteful spending in Washington than we have today,” said Pat Toomey, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania and the head of the conservative Club for Growth. “There is ample opportunity to find the offsets we need so that this does not have to be a fiscal disaster as well as a natural disaster.”
The Dems response:
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said he believed that providing rapid and extensive help overrode the need to cut spending elsewhere. “I think we have to understand that we have a devastation that has to be taken care of,” Mr. Reid said. “And I’m not into finding where we can cut yet.”
I believe that we need to make sure we get the money out as soon as we can, and figure out the cuts as soon as we can. Our people need this money as soon as possible, as do the rest of the nation. Maintaining a sense of unity is important, and now is the time to have that.
This entry was posted on Friday, September 16th, 2005 and is filed under Economy, General Politics, Hurricane Katrina. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 19th, 2005 at 1:39 pm
But cut they must, and it shouldn’t just be a trim either, I want the BIG SCISSORS cutting the pork out of the budget…..