January 6, 2013 — We hope, also, that the right-leaning members of the House of Representatives remember that disasters and disaster relief don't exist only on paper. We hope they see things the way Keating and Tierney do, that is, that delaying relief to millions of people is relief denied to individuals a million times over.
House Speaker John Boehner took his lumps. His delay in bringing the Senate's Sandy relief bill to the floor at the close of the 112th Congress because of political considerations — and his subsequent promise to make it the first order of business for the 113th — could leave struggling fishermen the ones battered and bruised.
The $51 billion in storm aid Boehner slates for debate on Jan. 15 has $150 million for fisheries disaster relief. It had been passed by the Senate, but Boehner reportedly thought he'd asked too much already of his party by helping to push through the Biden-McConnell-negotiated Senate bill at the edge of the "fiscal cliff." Asking for a vote on a spending bill just after raising taxes might not be politically expedient, he feared.
Funny how politics works. Wednesday, New York and New Jersey politicians — including some of Boehner's colleagues in the House — let the vitriol fly. By Thursday morning, Boehner had promised everyone a Friday vote on $9 billion for the National Flood Insurance Program that can go to storm victims and a Jan. 15 vote on the rest of the original $60 billion bill. By Thursday evening, Boehner had been re-elected as speaker of the House, and all the bad blood had ebbed away, a lot faster than Sandy's waters left New York and New Jersey.
With the immediate aid accomplished, House members now have the opportunity to apply scrutiny to the details of the remainder before the 15th.
We anticipate that Massachusetts' representatives will continue to speak up about the necessity of the fishing aid, a mere three-tenths of 1 percent of the $50 billion bill. Reps. William Keating and John Tierney displayed their sense of priority and timing by immediately vowing to work quickly to bring aid to those who need it.
Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard Times