From John Byrne at Raw Story:
Republicans block efforts to amendment relief bill, hold vote without providing copy of bill
In the wake of what the Wall Street Journal projected may be the most expensive natural disaster in American history, the Republican Leadership in the House of Representatives limited floor consideration of the $52 billion Katrina relief bill proposed by President Bush and voted to reject any Democratic efforts to amend the bill to include a wider array of relief measures, RAW STORY has learned. … MORE BELOW:
P.S. Don’t miss Larry King/CNN tonight. Sean Penn promotes HurricaneHousing.org and talks about his help in rescuing people. The police chief of New Orleans said we should listen to people like Sean Penn “who walk the walk.” And everyone says we should all try to catch Oprah today. Crooks and Liars has video from Oprah’s show.
Democrats said no one had even seen a copy of the legislation.
Voting along party lines, Republicans denied a measure that would have allowed for two hours of discussion and opened up the measure to be amended.
The Republican leadership pushed through a Suspension Rule in the House Rules Committee that blocked any members from offering amendments to the bill. Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-NY), the ranking Democrat on the Committee, led opposition to the rule.The bill, which enjoys bipartisan support, is expected to pass on the House floor tomorrow.
Democrats implored Republicans to allow amendments, which would enable consideration of measures such as which areas and to which agencies relief dollars were most needed and how to restructure FEMA so that it would be more effective.
“We’ve been on vacation for five weeks. Now, in our first week back, the Republican Leadership would rather duck and run than discuss what’s happened in the wake of Hurricane Katrina,” Slaughter told RAW STORY in a statement. “Life in the Gulf Coast is no vacation. The Federal Government failed the American people in its initial response to this horrible disaster and by their actions; the Republican Leadership is once again showing that their priorities are out of sync with the needs of so many hard working families.”
“It is this very lack of accountability in government which ensured that our disaster response would be a bigger disaster than the hurricane itself. Yet here they go again, completely unfazed in their determination to eliminate debate, consideration and accountability from the Congress and the Federal government. No one has even seen a copy of the bill.”
The White House expects to ask for more.
“My expectation is that we will, in fact, need substantially more than the $51.8 billion that the president is requesting today. But this at least puts everybody on very solid footing to perform their tasks in the several weeks ahead,” White House budget director Joshua Bolten told reporters Wednesday.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the loss of revenue from oil production and tourists in the Gulf Coast will trim economic growth by 0.5 percent to 1 percent.
we running here?! No one has seen a copy of the bill?! How in the hell are we to know that this is not a fucking direct deposit into Halliburton’s banks account?!?
I am SO SICK OF THIS SHIT!
Accountability, light of day, PUBLIC governance — we have NONE of these things!
Here is a comment I made yesterday on a little read thread, that expands on my thoughts.
this just gets worse and worse with no end in site. I’ve got so much anger churning in my gut I really don’t know what to do. I mentioned in open thread we quite literally I think going to need a revolution to take back the country and I’m not kidding. I’m not given to making sweeping statements to hear myself talk but just trying to get a few good people elected in 2006 isn’t going to do it I don’t think..what are we going to do?
We’re no longer living in a functioning democracy, that’s for sure.
And it’s patenhtly clear that the extremism of the Bush regime is anti-democracy on every level, this refusal to allow this legislation to be read, let alone debated being just one more examply of their assault on the essential core principles of democracy itself.
Revolution, real revolution, is a lot closer to reality than many want to believe. These psychopaths have inflicted so much damage on the country, (and the world), that it will take many decades to recover what we’ve lost as a civilization, let alone move ahead agin for the betterment of all.
Most of the Bush regime’s destructive agenda is designed to impact the country and the world after he’s out of the White House. We’ll be paying for their crimes for decades, and even if we win the White House in ’08 with a principled and strong Dem, (who that might be I haven’t a clue), it still seems impossible for much progress to be made reversing the damage in the short term.
Is not that the Republican rallying cry this week?
They are afraid of debating their too-little-too-late response to the Katrina disaster. But it will not go away – there are too many people involved here. It will never go away and all the world knows it.
Thanks Susan for the tip to watch Oprah and Sean Penn. It has occurred to me that the actors are REALLY helping out, with no fake back-up with fire fighters pulled off important duty or rescue helicopters pulled off rescue duty; no fake distribution centers, no shutting down a Red Cross center for 8 hours (for Laura). The Bush administration officals are the actors (the clowns) in this disaster, while the actors do real work without props or costumes like the rolled up shirt sleeves. (Why doesn’t Bush just buy some short sleeved shirts? LOL)
Let me get this straight —
the majority party is afraid to actually discuss the contents of this bill out in the open.
WTF are they afraid of? That their own guys will break ranks if they have to hear even one word about the bill their leadership has hammered out in secret?
Who’s living in a Banana Republic now?
Democrats putting their outrage on the record.
Doctors were treating 1,000 patients an hour at the New Orleans airport who were waiting for rescue out of town. There were 10 – 40 doctors there with no oxygen, no antibiotics, no surgery. They divided the people into three groups,
okay
needs medical attention
expected (expected to die)
200 died. The doctor said they gave them morphine and put them in a cool place to let them die. They could do nothing more for them.
Now, this horrifying and yet compassionate story made me think bitterly of the Republican’s culture of life and the enormous effort they made to delay the death of one person, Terri Schiavo. And now due to lack of immediate help from the Bush administration, the people of New Orleans have died by the thousands. I mean people who died after surviving the hurricane and the flood, died waiting for rescue and help.
The airport now has a full surgical unit.
Story was on WWL TV online.
… all sign a petition, state to state, or something demanding that this government cease and desist. We employ them. They have proven they cannot do their jobs. Further, they have exhibited malice towards the citizens by allowing them to die and blocking aid from outside sources. They are now in the process of re-locating displaced citizens into what are in fact, if not in name, internment camps.
Until this is stopped and these issues redressed and every single person who is complicit run out of this government, we do not trust this government to make any further decisions on our behalf. Any politician who does not unite in the cause of seeking justice in this matter will not only never again receive our votes, but we will actively campaign against them — red or blue, republican or democrat.
Can we do this? And deliver one to every politician? I’m just so horrified. Surely there is something we can do. Surely business as usual cannot just go on in the face of this.
Ya know, I used to take pride in the fact we had a National Guard — folks with non-military jobs and families, and were responsible for protecting us, but at the same time, one with us.
I figured that would protect us from becoming a police state.
After this past week, I am no longer so confident.
Our National Guard followed orders (which is their job, after all). But where was the compassion? Where was the outrage at what they were seeing? Why so many accounts of them ignoring people in need?
Wasn’t it the Republicans who were supposed to fear this sort of situation?
he is trying to “Federalize” Lousiana… they don’t want this kind of money on Democrats hands…
No one should be surprised by this. The Bush regime and it’s congressional minions are not going to open up their own stealth agenda to scrutiny or challenge by anyone.
We have to assume that any specific spending provisions in this bill will favor Halliburton first and foremost, and that any other spending specifics will be mostly strategically inefficient, mis-allocations of funds designed to help those who need help the least. Monies will almost certainly be targeted to flow to those states who host evacuees, and undoubtedly most if not all of those states will be Repub controlled states where lots of the aid money will stick to the hands and agencies of those through whom it’s given.
I expect the bulk of the money will flow to Halliburton and organizations like Operation Blessing and the other ‘faith-based’ organizations who regard proselytizing and conversions as the most imporatnt work they can do. I tremble for the folks sent to Utah. I really do.
Point of Info. Operation Blessing is a Pat Robertson organization, and it’s one in which he seriously abused it’s services and funds in Africa to benefit his diamond and gold mining interests with his partner the corrupt dictator and murderer Charles Taylor of Liberia.
Evidently this organization does do some good work, but it is a money machine for Robertson and it seems they gotten quite a bit of taxpayer money recently.
Point of Info. Operation Blessing is a Pat Robertson organization
Yes. Thanks for filling that in. There’s a long history of abuse of funds for that organization and we all understand Pat’s politics.
Oh and Operation Blessing got half a mil of our tax payer dollars last year. And FEMA lists lists them first on their list of private charities to donate to.
Monies will almost certainly be targeted to flow to those states who host evacuees
And what do you want to bet that shortly thereafter, the evacuees will get pushed out to blue states where “they can feel more comfortable with their own kind”.
Almost assuredly that will happen.
How many billions will fucking flat out disappear?
Will the money be picked up at a NYC bank and delivered by plane, dispersed in handouts to contractors with no accounting track record?
As much as they can get away with is how much will disappear!
This is a political gambit. Kind of like the Rethugs and their “Patriot Act” after 9/11. I mean, who could vote against it.
But, I want to say this. I have a hard time supporting any politician who votes for something like this, sight unseen. It is a ludicrous way to govern a nation.
Democrats must band together, and have some spine. Labeled as obstructionist or not, they need to stand up for process. And, the minimum process legislatively is a chance to read what you are proposing to enact into law, and a chance to attempt to ammend those provisions with which you disagree legislatively. Anyone who votes for this because it will look bad not to is failing to do their job. Period.
natural disaster ever is George (heh, heh) Bush.
Aside from the countless lives sent and left to die in various Gulfs, GWB & Co. has overseen the worst looting of the American people – individually, collectively, and in apparent perpetuity.
We’ve seen looters all right; über looters, like Enron & Worldcom. Jack Abramoff. Tom DeLay. Halliburton. The military-corporate Iraq-it-in.
What, aside from their obvious upper-class white maleness, do they have in common, these looters, these cheerleaders of disaster?
Maybe it’s their audacious ability to call themselves patriots while dismantling 200 years of American dreams.
Or their patriot’s disguise, assumed so piously it actually serves to distract our attention while they rob us blind?
What is it, other than a flat out psychosis of greed, lust, and fear that could explain these people? They’ve spent their lives scheming to “serve” a country with the sole purpose of dismantling it.
What is the reward beyond further personal enrichment?
Why do the neocons hate Americans?
Hold it up in the senate, at least long enough for a review of the particulars.
Insert language guaranteeing the right to depart the FEMA Camps.
Every time I read the title of this diary I read it as
“GOP Suspend Belief Debate”.
I have to stop and re-read it every time.
I think that was Susan’s intent 🙂