CQ NEWS
Jan. 11, 2013 – 5:45 p.m.
House Prepares for Sandy Relief Package Weighted With Amendments
By Kerry Young, CQ Roll Call
House Republican leaders will describe on Monday how much they want to battle over a proposed package of more than $50 billion for Superstorm Sandy recovery efforts.
Although more than 90 amendments to the Sandy measure have been proposed — including provisions calling for offsets to the spending and limiting funding for specific programs — GOP House leadership has made clear it wants to curtail the floor battle over Sandy aid. The House takes up on Tuesday a package consisting of a base bill (
The House Rules Committee meets Monday to decide on how many amendments, and which of those submitted, will reach the floor. The committee told members on Jan. 7 there would be a limit on amendments and set a Jan. 11 deadline for filing them. Democrats have submitted amendments seeking to add funding or relax limits on aid for communities, while Republicans are seeking to strip spending from the package or offset it.
For GOP lawmakers, the Sandy bill provides a platform to revive attempts to rein in government spending even as some seek to tread carefully because of criticism that came even from fellow Republicans after the House adjourned at the end of the 112th Congress without considering a Sandy relief measure.
“Providing relief for large-scale natural disasters is a proper function of government and I absolutely support the federal government’s role in situations such as this,” said
Sandy struck in the final days of October, causing more than 120 deaths and pummeling some of the most densely populated parts of the United States. It tore up New Jersey’s coast, and submerged parts of New York City, flooding major commuter tunnels and parts of the subway with seawater. New Jersey Gov.
“The people of New Jersey are in need, not from their own actions but from an act of God that delivered a natural, human and financial disaster,” Christie said in a state of the state address.
Senate Democrats, with the help of a dozen GOP colleagues, in December passed a $60.4 billion Sandy package that ultimately expired at the end of the 112th Congress.
House Democrats are pushing to make their chamber’s pending Sandy package more closely resemble the failed Senate one. They have offered amendments that would greatly broaden the number of states eligible for Environmental Protection Agency money through the Sandy package, and also want to increase funding for declared fishery disaster by $145 million to more closely resemble the doomed Senate bill.
“It will obviously make some people not happy and maybe make it harder to pass, but we’ve gotten such good support from our Senate members on both sides of the aisle for helping the people of Sandy, that I think we could overcome it,” Schumer said after the House overwhelmingly passed the first tranche of Sandy aid, a $9.7 billion increase in the borrowing authority of the National Flood Insurance Program. The Senate cleared this measure later in the day by voice vote.
Among the proposed amendments for the House’s $50 billion Sandy package is a bid by
Mulvaney, joined by the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee,
House Prepares for Sandy Relief Package Weighted With Amendments
Other proposed amendments wander somewhat afield from disaster relief.
David McKinley, R-W. Va., wants to use the Sandy package to rescind some unobligated money from international disaster accounts and funds available for foreign aid or military assistance to Egypt, Libya, Pakistan, or Tunisia, claiming this as an offset to Sandy spending.