GOP hardly rushing to Sandy victims' aid
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in Washington. (Jan 1, 2013) Credit: AP
A measly $9.7 billion.
After two months of delay.
Why no super response to superstorm Sandy?
At least 130 people were killed. In New York alone, 305,000 houses and apartments were either damaged or destroyed, along with 265,000 businesses. More than 140,000 flood insurance claims have already been filed and only a tiny percentage paid.
Sandy is America's costliest natural disaster since Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans in 2005. And even with George W. Bush's famous dawdling, the Gulf Coast got a $50 billion hug from Washington in 10 days.
So why did House Republican leader John Boehner let the last Congress go out of business without taking a vote on $60 billion in Sandy aid? His dwindling list of backers advanced various theories: bruised feelings from the fiscal-cliff debate; the upcoming debt-limit debacle; too much pork in the bill.
But this much was hard to deny: It was a cruel slap at people truly suffering, and it angered as many Republicans as Democrats.
"A disgrace," thundered New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, accusing Boehner of ducking four -- four! -- late-night phone calls.
"Cavalier attitude," agreed LI Congressman Peter King, who added: "Anyone from New York or New Jersey who contributes one penny to congressional Republicans is out of their minds."
By week's end, Christie and King had softened their not-so-friendly fire, and Boehner allowed a sliver of the aid to be voted on, promising a Jan. 15 vote on another $51 billion.
There are many lessons in this latest Washington dysfunction. One of them is most decidedly not: They have our backs down there.
1. Shelter living can be fun.
2. Congress was busy with all the swearings-in.
3. In the grand sweep of history, two months isn't so long.
4. Suffering is character-building and teaches self-reliance.
5. Why did you live near the water, anyway?
Twenty-eight is a lot of years for a homicide trail to go cold. But that long after Darwish Ali Darwish was brutally stabbed to death and his body dumped along the Southern State Parkway, State Police detectives report they finally have their man. The DNA databank, they say, helped to finger Raed Innab, 46, of Brooklyn. There was bad blood between the families. Darwish did seven years for killing Innab's uncle. But still. Forty stab wounds is no way to avenge a killing. Innab denies the charge, but law-enforcement patience and some high technology may have paid off this time.
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