House passes disaster aid package
$19.2B to help victims of recent storms, flooding rebuild
WASHINGTON – The House passed a $19.2 billion disaster aid package to help victims of recent storms and flooding rebuild, with the price tag growing by about $1.8 billion on the floor through amendments to add funds for repairing damaged military facilities, highways, levees, dams and more.
The vote was 257-150, with 34 Republicans crossing the aisle to support the bill drafted by the Democratic majority. President Donald Trump and GOP leaders tried to tamp down defections on the bill, which they oppose because it would pump more money into Puerto Rico, which hasn’t yet been able to spend much of the $20 billion previously appropriated after 2017’s Hurricane Maria.
Republicans are focused on the Senate, where bipartisan negotiations are ongoing on a separate aid package. The White House and Republicans want to impose more financial controls on Puerto Rico’s management of funds run through the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant program.
“I’ve spoken to the president, I’ve spoken to the leader on the Senate side, I believe we can solve this all next week,” House Minority Leader Kevin Mccarthy, R-calif., said during floor debate Friday. “I want to you know where my heart is: we will be back here next week, we will make law, and we will solve this.”
But the Senate package is stuck over a variety of unrelated issues, including a Trump request for $4.5 billion in border-related resources and a push by Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard C. Shelby to free up some $2 billion in year in harbor maintenance funds that currently have to compete with other discretionary programs. House Republicans from disaster-afflicted areas faced immense pressure back home to support the House Democrats’ bill, which is currently the only moving vehicle to deliver long-delayed relief.
And there’s significant bipartisan concern with the slow pace at which HUD has been parceling out the block grant funding. House Democrats included language in the underlying bill passed Friday that would require HUD to publish rules for disbursal of funds appropriated in February 2018, for Puerto Rico and other affected areas within 90 days of enactment. A bipartisan amendment from Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, D-texas, to shorten that to 14 days was adopted on a 393-20 vote.
Among those supporting the bill in the House was Rep. Neal Dunn, R-fla., who successfully offered an amendment to add $685 million for fixing military facilities battered in Hurricane Michael last October, including Tyndall Air Force Base. Trump visited Tyndall earlier this week as well as other stormravaged parts of the Florida Panhandle, where he pledged to expedite relief and got in a few digs at the Democrats who he blamed for holding up the disaster supplemental.
“House Republicans should not vote for the BAD DEMOCRAT Disaster Supplemental Bill which hurts our States, Farmers & Border Security,” Trump tweeted around 7 p.m. Thursday. He repeated the message at 11:58 p.m. with an addition: “Republicans must stick together!”
Before Trump’s tweets, bipartisan momentum was building for moving aid funds to residents and military bases struggling to clean up the mess from brutal storms in 2018 and 2019. And Friday’s floor action demonstrated that lawmakers of both parties are feeling the sting of a lack of movement on a disaster bill. Rep. Adrian Smith, R-neb., said on the floor that while the bill under consideration didn’t address everything Republicans or the president wanted, “Nebraskans need relief. This bill gets us closer to that.”
Dunn’s amendment was adopted by voice vote, as was much of the spending added Friday that few lawmakers wanted to oppose publicly. Dunn was one of several Republicans to cosponsor a bipartisan amendment from Rep. Joe Cunningham, D-S.C., to add another $270 million for Air Force facility repairs, including Tyndall and Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
The Air Force has been siphoning funds from other bases around the country to backfill the relief effort at disaster-stricken facilities, so the Cunningham amendment drew GOP cosponsors such as Michael R. Turner of Ohio, Rob Bishop of Utah and Don Young of Alaska.
Michigan Republicans on Friday asked U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to stop, at least temporarily, a court demand that dozens of congressional and state legislative districts be redrawn by Aug. 1.
State House Speaker Lee Chatfield, Rlevering, and several Republican members of Michigan’s congressional delegation filed the request, saying a threejudge panel’s order of April 25 “forgoes any semblance of respect for state sovereignty.”
Under court rules, Sotomayor, who handles applications from the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals covering Michigan, could grant the emergency stay herself or refer it to the full court. If she grants the request it can be appealed to the whole court.
The decision by the three-judge panel determined that Michigan’s current boundaries for about three dozen congressional and state legislative seats were unconstitutionally gerrymandered in 2011 to favor Republicans overall and must be redrawn. It gave the legislature until Aug. 1 to do so, or said it would redraw them itself.
In the request for a stay, Republicans also noted that the Supreme Court is currently considering redistricting cases brought in other states that could have a direct bearing on the redistricting order in Michigan and that there is a reasonable expectation
A Plantation man shot his wife in the face, returned his revolver to a bedroom closet, walked to a neighbor’s house and confessed that he’d killed her, police said.
When police got to the crime scene Wednesday night, Marisa Sherman was sitting upright on the living room couch. She’d clearly been shot in the face at point-blank range, according to a police report.
Sherman, 47, was pronounced dead on scene at 10:36 p.m.
Her transgression? She wouldn’t stop with the disrespectful talk, Fernando De Baere told investigators at the Plantation Police Department.
De Baere, 73, is now locked up in the Broward Main Jail in downtown Fort Lauderdale. He is being held without bond on a charge of premeditated murder, records show.
The neighbor called 911 at 10:21 p.m. to report De Baere’s disturbing admission.
De Baere, with blood spattered on his legs and boxer shorts, told police he and his wife had been arguing over her interactions with a former co-worker when De Baere took issue with “the way that she was talking to him,” his arrest report said.
De Baere told her to stop but she kept speaking to him disrespectfully, De Baere told police, so he got his Taurus .38-caliber revolver, stood over his wife and took aim.
– Appeal-democrat news services