New York Republicans choose Irene money and a Cantor compromise as Tea Party members revolt
Michael Grimm. Azi Paybarah, via flickr
9:41 am Sep. 22, 2011
Last night, Tea Party-aligned House Republicans bucked Speaker John Boehner and declined to pass a continuing resolution that would have funded the government starting Oct. 1 and beyond, raising the specter, once again, of a government shutdown. (The continuing resolutions, or "C.R."s, allow the government to sputter along for a finite amount of time. Congress never passed a budget for this fiscal year.)
The defeat of the resolution also leaves unanswered the question the question of how the government is going to get money into the hands of localities and people affected by Hurricane Irene and other recent natural disasters.
The bill failed by a vote of 195 to 230, with a sizable bloc of conservative Republicans voting against it on the grounds that there weren't enough spending cuts to offset the $3.65 billion in disaster relief largely related to the effects of the hurricane.
That's been a thorny issue for New York Republicans ever since House Majority Leader Eric Cantor suggested earlier this month that any disaster-relief spending should be offset dollar-for-dollar by cuts to other spending. Cantor's comments forced Republican members of the delegation to choose between a timely injection of federal aid to their communities and loyalty to their party leadership.
Reactions in the delegation varied, with Representative Nan Hayworth, from a Hudson Valley district, coming out in support of Cantor's idea at first, only to issue a subsequent press release assuring constituents that she wouldn't "let politics get in the way" of providing federal aid to the district. Representative Tom Reed, whose district is in the Southern Tier, also came out in support.
Other New York Republicans, like Michael Grimm and Chris Gibson, said cuts should be figured out later, as did Bob Turner, who was campaigning for the Ninth District seat as the mini-controversy unfolded.
The House leadership, including Cantor, eventually settled on a partial offset, scrapping an auto-technology program to produce what they said would be a savings of $1 billion. (Democrats objected to the cuts, saying the program created jobs, and expressed a preference for a $6.9 billion disaster-relief bill, with no offsets, that recently passed in the Senate.) But by then they had lost control of the caucus, and couldn't find enough votes to pass the bill.
The $1 billion offset ended up being opposed by 48 House Republicans. It was good enough for the New York delegation, though. All eight Republican members voted for the continuing resolution.
