PREZ TOURS LA. FLOOD AREAS:
La. pols who denied N.Y. Sandy aid, grab fed funds
A TRIO OF GOP Louisiana lawmakers who voted against funding for the Sandy-ravaged Northeast sought similar relief for the flooding that’s brutalized their state.
The lawmakers — Reps. Steve Scalise and John Flem- ing and Sen. Bill Cassidy — were able to get much-needed relief from the federal government when President Obama declared a disaster in their state the same day they made a request.
That federal money will go toward grants for temporary housing, home repairs and low-cost loans to cover uninsured property loss, among other dire needs.
But those same pols were among the 179 Republicans in the House who refused to vote in favor of $50.5 billion in disaster relief when Sandy decimated New York and New Jersey in the fall of 2013.
Oddly enough, the Red Cross is calling the flooding in Louisiana that has killed 13 people and damaged 60,000 homes the worst natural disaster to strike the country since Sandy.
A spokesperson for at least one of the lawmakers didn’t see the hypocrisy, according to a Los Angeles Times column, which pointed out the double standard.
“Apples and oranges,” T.J. Tatum, a spokesperson for Scalise, told the newspaper.
Tatum said declaring a disaster in order to access already-allocated funds isn’t the same as voting in favor of billons of dollars in additional disaster aid.
The three Louisiana politicians, at the time of the Sandy funds vote in 2013, said they wanted a portion of any additional funds for hurricane victims to be offset by acrossthe-board cuts in federal spending.
“As I’ve always said, paying for disasters and being fiscally responsible are not mutually exclusive, and while we’re working to fund aid in fiscally responsible ways, we can also be working to provide immediate assistance to people in disaster areas,” Scalise told The Times Picayune in January 2013.