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Increasing numbers of House Republicans want to link disaster relief to spending cuts or changes to aid programs, complicating efforts to provide assistance to Hurricane Sandy victims.

The issue already has caused a political embarrassment for Republicans, and it takes center stage again next week when the House is scheduled to vote Jan. 15 on a second installment of Sandy-related aid.

Congress traditionally has treated disaster assistance as emergency spending that doesn’t require offsetting budget savings. Days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005, Congress appropriated more than $60 billion in aid with little opposition.

By contrast, House Speaker John Boehner on Jan. 1 blocked House action on Sandy-aid legislation because of unease among his Republican colleagues about the $60 billion price tag. After protests by New Jersey and New York Republicans whose constituents were among those hit hardest by the Oct. 29 storm, Boehner scheduled a Jan. 4 vote and lawmakers passed a first installment of $9.7 billion in help.

“Emergency bills like this should not come to the floor without offsets to pay for it or structural reforms,” Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican and chairman of the Financial Services Committee, said during debate on the measure, which allowed the nation’s flood-insurance fund to continue paying claims from the region.

Hensarling’s comments and the delay in delivering aid to victims of one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history underscore how deficit-conscious Republicans are taking a stand against spending increases -- including emergency relief.

The votes that Boehner, an Ohio Republican, has scheduled for Jan. 15 would deliver two more installments in Sandy-related aid. One would provide $17 billion for immediate needs, and the other would allocate $33.6 billion for long-range projects that include improvements to buildings, coastlines and subway tunnels to prevent future flooding.

To pass the full package, House Republican leaders will be counting on fellow party members from the U.S. Northeast and the Gulf Coast, which has received billions of dollars in emergency aid since Katrina, to join Democrats in supporting the bill.

The debate over requiring offsets for disaster spending contrasts with the passage of past emergency funding bills. After Katrina struck the Gulf Coast and unleashed major flooding in New Orleans, then-President George W. Bush called Congress into emergency session.

Lawmakers passed $10.1 billion in aid, with a unanimous vote in the House. A week later Congress appropriated another $50.8 billion, with only 11 Republican no votes. By 2008, that amount had ballooned into $107 billion for highway reconstruction, small business loans, levee reconstruction and other projects, most of which wasn’t covered by spending cuts or revenue elsewhere in the budget.

Other spending that wasn’t offset in recent years and contributed to expansion of the U.S. budget deficit -- including for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- sharpened the determination of many Republicans to put the brakes on further emergency expenditures.

After a tornado hit Joplin, Missouri, in May 2011, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican, said federal disaster aid should be offset. He reiterated that stance after a hurricane tore through Virginia a few months later as it moved up the East Coast.

Cantor’s comments drew criticism from local officials in his own congressional district after a 5.8-magnitude earthquake centered there destroyed more than 30 homes and closed two schools. Still, he and other top Republicans pushed to partially offset $3.6 billion in emergency spending for victims of the various disasters.

New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie, who called Boehner’s decision to block the aid vote “disappointing and disgusting,” made clear his frustration over the delay in his state-of-the-state address to the New Jersey legislature on Jan. 8 in Trenton.

“We as a state waited 72 days, seven times longer than the victims of Hurricane Katrina” for federal assistance, Christie told lawmakers. “I hope New Jerseyans, both Republican and Democrat, will never stand silent when our citizens are being short-changed.” More at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-11/sandy-aid-runs-into-republica
n-demands-for-spending-cuts.html

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