What goes around, comes around. "In January, Senators Jeff Flake and John McCain, as well as Rep. Paul Gosar, all voted against a $50.5 billion Sandy Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) relief package, with McCain stating, “We cannot justify this type of spending.” Gosar, who denies the existence of climate change, was one of the 67 Republicans to oppose even the first vote – to provide a paltry $9 billion out of the $60 billion total requested. Now that these three Republicans have experienced a natural disaster in Arizona, however, it seems that they consider spending federal money for rebuilding in the aftermath to be absolutely necessary. It’s unfortunate that states’ needing to fight for emergency funds even an issue, but because of sequestration and budget tightening, FEMA has limited funding – not enough to help with every single flood, fire, and other natural disaster – and must deny some requests. So last week, Dan Watson of the agency stated that, although they had provided assistance with firefighting efforts during the June fire, “the damage to Yarnell did not rise to the level of a federal disaster,” and that the city would need to turn to any of the other federal agencies that issue relief money."
Posted on: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 04:34:41 +0000
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