Hey East Coast Conservatives...Romney Is On Your Side.

[Mayhem]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...enario_n_2035671.html#314_republicans-vs-fema

On day one of his presidency, Mitt Romney would seek a $500 million cut to FEMA as part of 5 percent across-the-board cut to discretionary spending, according to the Tweeted calculations of the Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson. (FEMA's budget is around $10 billion.)

The pledge follows a string of Republican attacks on the disaster preparedness funds.

"Between 2010 and 2012, House Republicans forced a reduction of 43 percent in the primary grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that pay for disaster preparedness," reported The New York Times in August.

Last year, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) demanded that disaster relief funds for Joplin tornado victims be offset by spending cuts elsewhere.

Cantor sought FEMA money for his own district a few months later in the aftermath of the Aug. 23 East Coast earthquake.

Mitt Romney In GOP Debate: Shut Down Federal Disaster Agency, Send Responsibility To The States

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/28/mitt-romney-fema_n_2036198.html

During a CNN debate at the height of the GOP primary, Mitt Romney was asked, in the context of the Joplin disaster and FEMA's cash crunch, whether the agency should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response.

"Absolutely," he said. "Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that's even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?"

"Including disaster relief, though?" debate moderator John King asked Romney.

"We cannot -- we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," Romney replied. "It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we'll all be dead and gone before it's paid off. It makes no sense at all."

How Romney And Ryan Would Severely Impair Disaster Relief Efforts

http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/10/28/1102471/romney-ryan-disaster-relief/

The federal government’s ability to respond to natural disasters, like Hurricane Sandy currently bearing down on the East Coast, would be significantly hindered under a Romney-Ryan administration.

At least three times, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have publicly demanded that the federal government only disburse disaster relief funding if Congress agreed to offsetting budget cuts elsewhere. This would hold desperately-needed disaster relief funding hostage unless Congress agreed to cuts elsewhere in the budget, an extraordinarily difficult prospect even in normal circumstances.

Though GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) became the public face of such intransigence in the wake of natural disaster last year, Romney and Ryan have repeatedly made clear they agree with Cantor’s position.

Last year, after a major tornado and flood struck the United States, Romney was asked in a debate about federal disaster relief funding. Romney not only suggested shuttering FEMA and sending responsibility for disaster relief “back to the private sector,” but also said it would be “immoral” for the federal government to fund disaster relief efforts without cutting the budget elsewhere. “It makes no sense at all,” Romney concluded.

Ryan’s 2012 budget took a similar approach to disaster funding. As The Hill noted in May 2012, Ryan’s budget called for any disaster relief funding to “be fully offset within the discretionary levels provided in this resolution.” In other words, Congress would have to agree on cuts elsewhere in the budget if it wanted to dole out funds after a disaster. This idea was so far out of the mainstream that even Republican legislators abandoned the idea. Ryan opposed Obama’s efforts to build significant funding for disaster relief into the budget, a move intended to avoid the kinds of delays forced by Cantor and the Tea Party last year.

This is not a new position for Ryan. Long before he entered the political limelight, Ryan was still pushing a similar line on disaster funding. In a March 23, 2004 speech on the House floor, Ryan proposed that any emergency spending legislation, including disaster relief, be automatically offset by an “across-the-board” budget cut. After proposing legally-binding spending limits, Ryan bemoaned the fact that these emergency spending items “do not have to be paid for under our current budget rules.” Automatic cuts, Ryan explained, would help Congress offset funding that went to disaster relief.