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Subscribe to RSSPresident Barack Obama requested Friday that Congress authorize $60.4 billion in emergency spending to help the states hit by the supers-storm Sandy in late October.
A House Democratic aide told NBC News that they "even though it's reasonable, we don't expect Republicans to just hand it over. We're going to have to fight for it."
Some congressional Republicans have said that the money spent on Sandy ought to be offset with spending cuts in other parts of the federal budget; most Democrats do not seek offsets.
In a joint statement, Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y. and Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., co-chairs of the bipartisan congressional task force on recovering from Tropical Sandy, praised Obama's request. "While more may be needed in the long term, this robust package is a major first step that we will work to pass as quickly as possible in Congress to help devastated communities, families and businesses."
Sen. Charles Schumer, D- N.Y. said Thursday that Congress ought to approve the emergency spending for recovery from the storm in a separate bill, not as part of the year-end "fiscal cliff" package which Obama and congressional leaders are negotiating.
"Disaster aid has never been part of any kind of deficit reduction plan.... It's a one-time allocation and you don't need it after that. We prefer to keep it separate and I think that's the White House plan," Schumer told reporters in a briefing with Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, D- Ill.
At a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing Thursday, Sen. Robert Menendez, D- N.J. made the case that New Jersey had supported other states when they were recovering from natural disasters and now New Jersey deserves commensurate help from them.
“When we had Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast in Mississippi and Alabama and Louisiana, I was there,” Menendez told HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, who is leading the administration’s Sandy recovery initiative. “When we had tornadoes in Joplin, Missouri, I was there. When we had flooding along the Mississippi, I was there….. Because I believe this is the United States of America. So I fully expect that now that now for the first time we have the type of devastation that others have suffered and should understand that we're going to have the type of response that others have received.”
NBC’s Luke Russert contributed to this story
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Large amounts of disaster aid should be closely scrutinized. Not everything is paid for by the federal government when we have disasters in other states. The same standards should apply here.
pay off the claims, condemn what's left, give them fair market value for their property and do NOT allow them to rebuild. Turn that land into part of the National Seashore. There's absolutely NO reason We should have to pay to rebuild flood damaged properties repeatedly. If you had flood insurance, you get the value of what you paid for to rebuild somewhere else, but not there. If you didn't have flood insurance, the gov't claims your property under imminent domain laws and you get to rebuild somewhere else.
I agree, and then we should do the same for houses that burn down in wildfire zones, and for properties in mudslide zones, and earthquake zones, heck as long as we are talking about flood zones, lets pay to move the millions and millions of people to move out of those flood zones, to some place safe lets see, Midwest is out, you got tornadoes, fires, drought, California and the east coast got volcanoes, earthquakes and wildfires, and mudslides, lets see the south, flooding, fire, drought, violence, sometimes disease strikes somewhere, why its almost as if every place has some personal disaster that would make it unsafe to build sometime somewhere.
An aside why do we have insurance? I mean the whole point is to pay for disaster or something bad, but then when it occurs the costs go up and sometimes like here in Florida the companies move out of the place in droves. I mean isn't the point to pay for when things go bad, it seems like a company will increasingly only take you when it is in a completely safe zone, but then why have insurance there at all, you have insurance for the areas where bad stuff does happen, so you can insulate yourself from damage ideally. Just seems like if you can't rebuild the house because the company won't pay, then why pay for insurance at all in the first place.
Exactly Burn...you tell the old guy!
barack, you want money, take it back from the musllim brotherhood, Egypt, Pakistan, and all the other countries that hate us that you love to give American taxpayer's money to. Thanks to you we no longer have a viable foreign policy so take the money back from your radical muslim terrorist friends. You get no more American taxpayer money until you cut spending, support and defend the constitution, put American first, and come up with a responsible and reasonable budget as required by law. If you won't do these things then phuck you.
If OUR debt was as small as the minds trying to fix the problem we'd be out of debt already !
NO Syrian War = Money To Pay For Sandy Victims - Anyone in Congress Lights Go On Yet ?
Worst President EVER on Any Continent - at any point in history !
He's really, really bad and evil too. But he's no Hitler, Stalin or Mao.
He has 4 more years to catch up though.....
If this idiot presidents people had paid attention to the storm warnings and paid their homeowners and business insurance premiums we wouldn't be here.
Seriously? You're asking NY libs to take responsibility for themselves?
Seriously Voy??? So Mother Nature had no responsibility in the hurricane, the storms, the rain, the wind, the floods, the blizzard, etc, etc, etc??? Your an idiot!!!
The money has to come from somewhere. It's not like we're running a surplus. Let Obama take it from Obamacare. Or he could put a down payment on the recovery from Sandy by cancelling his Hawaii vacation during Christmas. I hear that's supposed to cost $45M. I guess for him to just spend the holidays at Camp David would be a little too much to ask!
House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R)
This is a non-issue. The money will be given to the states.
Hey NYC, why don't you just raise taxes on Upstater's, like you usually do to pay for all of your city needs? I'm also wondering how the Red Cross is dispersing the 85 million that they've raised to those affected by Sandy? Also, where is the 23 million that NBC's "Coming Together" concert raised being utilized?
With that being said, I expect Congress to allocate funding for these people.
I see NightHawk that you don't know who the 47% that Romney was refering to was Senior Citizens on Social Security, Disable Veterans, Retired Veterans, Active Duty Military in War Zones, but I will say that there is a very select few of the that should be paying taxes like Big Corporations that have not been paying any taxes for a long time like one company that makes light bulbs and a lot more overseas.
Corporations don't pay taxes, consumers do.
If you raise taxes on a corporation, the corporation will pass those extra costs onto the consumer. Or, they'll just leave the country.
60 Billion? Why not make it 60 Trillion or 60 Gazillion?
Obama doesn't care. After all it is free money!!!
No one needs to work anymore as long as Odumbo is in charge of the printing press.
You are a fool Obama does not have the authority to print money that resides with the Fed. Educate yourself.
Another wrong "fact" by a tea-partier. The Governors of NY, NJ and CT asked for 80 billion. Obama cut it to 60 billion.
Like your avatar, btw
Gdale: Obama can spend money faster than a drunken sailor though.
If you would educate yourself you wouldn't have voted for him.
Get a education and then maybe a job will follow.
The reason Romney didn't get elected was because when he said he would put America back to work 51% said Hell no I don't want to work for a living.
Over throw the anti christ!!!!
In the modern world actual money does not exist it is just a matter of transferring numbers around from one place to another so it really does not matter how much is spent!
Wrong Obama is not in charge of the printing presses. Ben Bernanke is in charge of the printing presses, and neither the Executive Branch, Legislative Branch, or the Judicial Branch has power over the Federal Reserve. You can thank our Founding Fathers for that bit of legislative work.
If Obama asked for a resignation, there would be one.
Obama LOVES Bernanke.
Bernanke prints whatever Obama wants and the citizens get left holding the bag.
Dip @!$%# ettech, read up on the federal reserve and when it was established and how and you will have a real revelation, the founding fathers did not have a damn thing to do with it. Sorry to burst your bubble and pull you out of your ignorant stupor.,
HAHAHA, that is a good one, had my laughing for a few minutes.
..... you did mean for that to be a joke right?
Somebody explain to me why they need 60b dollars. That storm was not even a cat1 hurricane. I live in Florida and this is not uncommon, we deal with it. That was barely a tropical storm. Just shaking my head this president is going to bankrupt us
The storm hit with a 14 ft tidal surge. This is the highest of any storm to hit north of Cape Hatteras in recorded history. The surge hit at high tide with a full moon. We had ocean water where it has never been before. And never thought possible to hit.
Whoope doo happens here all the time deal with it
Those are 2 incidents forom 2012 when your Govenor asked for and received assistance from the Federal Government.
I am dealing with it. I work 40 hours a week. Since Sandy, I come home from work and eat dinner. I then go down the basement which was flooded and remove the @!$%# that's down there until I can't work no more. I go to bed and do the same thing the next day. I've got my basement clean and am now going through boxes to see what is salvageable. I clean what I can recover and throw away what I can't. On weekends if the weather is nice I'm outside trying to get the sand off my lawn and if not I'm back in the basement. But there are things I can't do, like beach repletishment or rebuilding the sea walls higher then they were or repairing infrastructure. Those are the things that Christie asked the money for. I never complained that my tax dollars were being spent helping out people in other parts of the country that were in need. If you don't agree that's your right, but please ask your Governor to stop taking my money first.
And u think Flordians have not been thru the same thing We bear the brunt of hurricanes and tropical storms Where was Obama when tropical storm Beryl came thru Jacksonville no where to be seen because we are not a big market so thats ok we dont need his lame leadership we will be fine storms nothing new to us
I had to look up Beryl. According to FlaglerLive:
How could you possibly compare that to what we went through? I'm sorry it rained on your Memorial Day barbecue.
Barking up the wrong tree Jersey...folks in New Orleans, Alabama, MS and Florida still recovering from Katrina after all these years, so stop your whining, pull up your big boy undies and press!!!
Jersey u are a true freakin idiot if you expect love from the south. U have the balls to say what u went thru? barely a tropical storm? Give me a frteakin break we have thunderstorms worse than that
What don't you understand? It wasn't the wind speeds, it was the storm surge. In the 30+ years I've lived here I've ridden out many cat1's, a couple of cat 2's and even a cat 3(Gloria). There has never been a storm as bad as Sandy. It was a 1,000 mile wide cat1.
obama need not ask the tax-payer for $60 billion, he needs to ask the stinking filthy rich like BUFFET,GATES,BLOOMBERG and so on who feel they should be paying more in taxes.. they have the money and they want to give it to the government, then obama needs to go to them.
Obama puts the nation $60 billion further in debt, requests money with no offset in spending cuts. Meanwhile, we're $16,000,000,000,000 in debt and climbing.
OMG....best President EVAH!!! Let's build him a f*cking statue!
P.S.: I still think Romney would've been a worse President, so while I voted for neither of them, I'm glad Romney lost.
Obama needs $60 billion......
He should just call his pal Bernanke and have him press the "Ctrl - print" buttons.
They've so destroyed the value of our currency with TARP, Stimulus, QE1, QE2, ZIRP, TWIST and QE3 (QE-4-ever), a few more billion won't hurt.
Well, if he don't spend over $100,000 in tax money on his daughter's spring break, that could help towards this.
gator662 to answer your question, New York and that area doesnot have the preparations for Hurricanes like we do in the South. I from Texas and I have seen my share of Hurricanes in my time. The other reason 60 billion is that the real estate up there is so d?mn expensive.
there is absolutely no reason why 3 bedroom brick house is worth less here compared to the same 3 bedroom brick house in NY. i have family in MA. i can tell you property up their is so over valued and inflated for property tax reasons.
thats there problem kiddo
Pull the money out of the Department of Education. They no longer teach anymore.
especially in chicago land
Awesome lets just keep printing those Green Backs, with no Gold to back it up . Its all a Monopoly Game . I would like to buy Board Walk For $400 please ....... If You Amplify the Frequency( The Structure of Matter will Change).
yep further in debt Way to go Obummer
Why doesn't Buckwheat Barry ask his buddy Warren Buffet and all the big money libs to put up the money. Warren sends tons of money to Africa to help out and he definitely believes the wealthy do not pay enough taxes so now he can step up and lead. I think the Silicon Valley, College professors, wall st., jews, Hollywood, college students, folks on welfare and the dole and unions would be more than willing to step up as they have the money barry talks about. Lets start a deal where you have to walk the walk if you are going to talk the talk.
much agreed, where you at warren? where you at gates? where you at bloomberg? where you at letterman? where you at judd?
oh my , is this going to be like wheres waldo?
when the help is needed they are nowhere to be found.
they dont feel the need to step up when people are in need.
just where in the hell are these bleeding heart rich bricks at.