Here is the al.com story about why Mo Brooks voted against the Hurricane Sandy relief bill on January 4.
Among other things, Mr. Brooks said,
“It is a flawed process when freshmen congressmen who were sworn in (Thursday) are asked to approve $9 billion in spending of money that we don’t have, without committee hearings or anything else that would help us make an informed decision.”
He also said,
“This is not the way to do the people’s business … The financially responsible way to fund this disaster relief is by shifting spending from lower priority items to higher priority items. In this case, Washington was financially irresponsible because all it did was agree to borrow $9 billion more that we don’t have and cannot afford.”
Mr. Brooks also questioned why the federal government is in the business of insuring beach front property.
Sadly, the rest of the Alabama House delegation voted for the bill which passed 354-67 . It also passed the Senate on a voice vote.
The next vote on Hurricane Sandy relief will be on January 15 when a $51 billion proposal will be considered.
This spending may not be appropriate and it certainly is not affordable. If Congress approves more spending on Hurricane Sandy relief it should also include spending offsets so the US debt does not increase. In a budget of nearly $4 trillion this ought to be easy to do.
Our Alabama Congressional delegation is not as conservative as they would have you believe. Don’t be shy in encouraging them to do the right thing.
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75% of the voters in Brooks district disagree with his reasoning. Maybe he should spend more time making explicit proposals on what programs to cut and less time grandstanding about his fiscal viewpoint.
Brooks and his GOP colleagues have been quite explicit in making proposals and enacting them. More GOP proposals are on the way. Not so sure about the Democrats.
The Republican ideas on which programs to fund and the level to fund that at, and by inference the programs to be cut, will be identified in the House budget resolution for fiscal year 2014. We will see this by April 16 as part of the regular legislative process mandated by public law.
We will see President Obama’s proposals by about February 12 when he submits to Congress his budget request for fiscal year 2014.
The budget resolutions the GOP House passed in 2011 and in 2012 were the GOP spending and cutting plans for FY12 and FY13 respectively. Some Democrats know about this and have been quite vocal in commenting on the GOP budgets. Maybe even George has seen them.
The Democrat Senate has not bothered to pass a budget resolution for over three years and accordingly have prevented agreement on the joint budget resolution that is required by law. This damages what little budget discipline there is in Congress and is one big reason most of the federal government at the moment is funded by a continuing resolution which expires in late March.
We will soon see very detailed spending plans from BHO and the GOP House just as every president provides every year and just as the GOP House has every year it has been in control during the Obama administration.
If there has lately been a lack of specificity in plans for spending and cutting spending, its mostly with Democrats in Congress. Why are Harry Reid and his colleagues disrupting the legislative process required by law? …. oh, wait, we know why.
Why are you trying to blame democrats and Harry Reid for Mo Brooks failures?
Why are you moderating my comments?
What do you mean?
One of your comments got hung up in moderation, out of dozens.
Huh?
Wow…thats a long answer, and still contains nothing specific.
Romney/Ryan also refused to specify any cuts, only that they would cut non-security discretionary spending by 5%. They were planning to increase defense spending by 10%, which would have resulted in even higher deficits than Obama.
No one believes that the Repubics are serious about cutting spending cause they have never done it before. The folks damaged by Sandy will get their $60billion, Brooks will have made a few more enemies and everything will continue as before.
Non-security discretionary spending is about $600billion, so the Rom/Ry plan was to cut the budget by $30billion.
What proposals has Brooks enacted?
He agrees with me and that’s what matters to me.
I am unaware of any polling on Sandy to substantiate your 75 % number. if you have a reference please share it.
Don’t blame me, I voted for Charlie Holley (D)
http://redeyesfrontpage.blogspot.com/2013/01/dont-blame-me-i-voted-for-charlie.html
Ya do have to admire Mo and his commitment to being the crazy redneck from the backwood state. He co-sponsored a bill that is somehow going to magically change the plain reading of the 14th amendment such that some children born in the USA are citizens automatically and some are not. Somebody get Mo a big straw hat and a corncob pipe, PLEASE!