Chris Christie says House Republicans were 'Disgusting to Watch'

[BSB]

Chris Christie On Sandy Aid: House Republicans Were 'Disappointing And Disgusting To Watch'

WASHINGTON -- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) lit into House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Republicans Wednesday for not holding a vote on a Hurricane Sandy relief bill.

"There is only one group to blame for the continued suffering of these innocent victims: the House majority and their speaker, John Boehner," he said. "This is not a Republican or Democratic issue. Natural disasters happen in red states and blue states and states with Democratic governors and Republican governors. We respond to innocent victims of natural disasters, not as Republicans or Democrats, but as Americans. Or at least we did until last night. Last night, politics was placed before oaths to serve our citizens. For me, it was disappointing and disgusting to watch."

House Republicans declined to schedule a vote for Sandy aid Tuesday night, after voting to pass a fiscal cliff deal. If the House does not pass a disaster relief bill before noon on Thursday, when the new session of Congress begins, lawmakers will have to start over.

"Last night the House of Representatives failed that most basic test of public service, and they did so with callous indifference to the suffering of the people of my state," said Christie. "Sixty-six days and counting -- shame on you. Shame on Congress.
Despite my anger and disappointment, my hope is that the good people in Congress -- and there are good people in Congress -- will prevail upon their colleagues to finally, finally put aside the politics and help our people now."

http://www.skweezer.com/s.aspx?q=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/02/chris-christie-sandy_n_2396537.html

[Plane]

I like Christie.

He isn't distracted from the central issues.
He speaks forthrightly.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Christie is right about this. The Republican'ts are obviously worried that their fatcat financiers will replace them with a 'bagger unless they act like Scrooge all the time.

[Christians4LessGvt]

Christie Craving Pork-Filled Sandy Bill

Jan 2, 2013 - By DANIEL HALPER       

New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a Republican, blasted Speaker of the House John Boehner for ending the congressional session before voting on the Hurricane Sandy relief bill.

"I called the Speaker four times last night after 11:20 and he did not take my calls," said Christie, who said Congress had not delivered on the aid needed to clean-up after the hurricane and Boehner had avoided giving him answers as to why. "There's no reason for me to believe anything they tell me, because they've been telling me stuff for weeks. And they didn?t deliver."

But one of the big objections to the bill was that Senate Democrats had filled it with pork.

In fact, "Democrats expanded the legislation during a mark-up to include not just areas affected by Sandy, but also to provide money for 'storm events that occurred in 2012 along the Gulf Coast and Atlantic Coast within the boundaries of the North Atlantic and Mississippi Valley divisions of the Corps that were affected by Hurricanes Sandy and Isaac,'" we reported previously.

The expansion of the bill was a way to provide a financial incentive for senators from red states--"two Republicans senators from Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas, and the one Republican senator from Louisiana"--to vote for the bill. "The Sandy kickbacks provide an incentive for those Republicans to vote on the bill," we wrote.

It is true that the Sandy bill in the House strips the legislation of at least some of the pork, but after yesterday's fight over the "fiscal cliff" deal it seems reasonable that Congress might not have been up for another battle just yet.

Nevertheless, the House leadership has promised that the Sandy bill will be the first priority for the next Congress, which will be sworn in tomorrow.

"Getting critical aid to the victims of Hurricane Sandy should be the first priority in the new Congress, and that was reaffirmed today with members of the New York and New Jersey delegations. The House will vote Friday to direct needed resources to the National Flood Insurance Program. And on January 15th, the first full legislative day of the 113th Congress, the House will consider the remaining supplemental request for the victims of Hurricane Sandy," say Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a joint statement released after Christie's remarks.


http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/christie-craving-pork-filled-sandy-bill_693530.html

[Christians4LessGvt]

The Pork Filled and Expensive
Non-Relief Sandy Relief Bill

By Katie Pavlich


Jan 02, 2013

 It's been 66 days since Hurricane Sandy slammed into the East Coast, causing major damage in New York and New Jersey. The storm was so powerful, it is in the running to become the most expensive storm for taxpayers on record. Historically, Congress has passed hurricane relief bills in the immediate aftermath of storm damage, but Sandy is a different story. Why? Congress wrote up Hurricane Sandy Relief legislation and then Harry Reid's Senate loaded it with pork. What's in it? Many things that hardly count as relief for victims.

The pork-barrel feast includes more than $8 million to buy cars and equipment for the Homeland Security and Justice departments. It also includes a whopping $150 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to dole out to fisheries in Alaska and $2 million for the Smithsonian Institution to repair museum roofs in DC.

An eye-popping $13 billion would go to "mitigation" projects to prepare for future storms.

Other big-ticket items in the bill include $207 million for the VA Manhattan Medical Center; $41 million to fix up eight military bases along the storm?s path, including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; $4 million for repairs at Kennedy Space Center in Florida; $3.3 million for the Plum Island Animal Disease Center and $1.1 million to repair national cemeteries.

Budget watchdogs have dubbed the 94-page emergency-spending bill "Sandy Scam."

$58.8 million for forest restoration on private land.
$197 million "to protect coastal ecosystems and habitat impacted by Hurricane Sandy."
$10.78 billion for public transportation, most of which is allocated to future construction and improvements, not disaster relief.
$17 billion for wasteful Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), a program that has become notorious for its use as a backdoor earmark program.

Not surprisingly, the media is jumping all over Speaker Boehner's pulling of the non-relief relief bill as "leaving Sandy victims out in the cold" while failing to lay any of the blame on Reid's Senate for not sending the House a clean bill.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie did the same today during a press conference about the relief package. Christie called the failure of Boehner to bring the bill to the floor for a vote a result of "toxic politics," berated the House Majority for the delay and said the legislation wasn't full of pork. Christie called on Congress to "do their job," while failing to acknowledge part of the job is preventing misuse of taxpayer funds for pet projects not related to legislation at hand.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/01/02/the-pork-filled-and-expensive-nonrelief-sandy-relief-bill-n1477710

[Christians4LessGvt]

122812 - Sen. Paul speaks on waste in Sandy emergency funding

[Plane]

  That is how pork works.

   Do the congressmen who made a christmass tree out of the relief bill feel any twinge of guilt at slowing down the aid or for tapping some of the money for non aid purposes?

   If they do they probly surpress it for the sake of the pork.

    This does not invalidate Govenor Christies complaint , it only means that there are more culprits than those he mentioned.

[BSB]

Not even a Texan would believe the crap you posted CU.

BSB

P.S. Getting seriously cold here in the beautiful blue state of Massachusetts. Expected to be -10 in parts of this home of the brave and Americas intelligentsia.  But not only are we old Yankees smart as hell we're as tough as whipcord and saddle leather.   

[Xavier_Onassis]

Rand Paul is a prick and should be ignored by all sane entities.