- Hurricane Ian devastated Florida this previous week as Republican Senators voted in opposition to aid.
- Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Rick Scott additionally penned a letter asking for federal aid for the hurricane harm.
- Florida locals say they’re operating out of assets as they try to get well from the storm.
Sen. Marco Rubio demonstrated this week a now-familiar Republican routine round taking federal cash for hurricane aid.
Hurricane Ian hit Florida as a Class 4 storm on Wednesday, leaving greater than 2.5 million individuals with out energy, greater than 1,100 individuals in want of rescue, and practically 80 individuals lifeless, in line with The New York Instances.
However Florida’s senators, Rubio and Rick Scott, did not vote in favor of a stopgap spending invoice on Thursday that included a further $18.8 billion allotted to FEMA spending for Hurricane Ian and different pure disasters, HuffPost reported. The invoice handed, with out the assistance of 25 Republican ‘No’ votes.
CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday introduced up how Rubio voted in opposition to Hurricane Sandy aid: “Why ought to different senators vote for aid on your state whenever you did not vote for a package deal for theirs?”
“It had been loaded up with a bunch of issues that had nothing to do with catastrophe aid,” Rubio replied. “I’d by no means put on the market that we should always go use a catastrophe aid package deal for Florida as a method to pay for every kind of different issues individuals need across the nation.”
The New York Instances disproved the concept aid went down non-Sandy-related avenues in 2017 after Republican lawmakers defended their votes in opposition to the invoice.
Rubio defined his place on the Hurricane Ian aid to Bash: “I’ll struggle in opposition to it having pork in it. That is the important thing,” he stated.
—Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 2, 2022
Nonetheless, Rubio and Scott despatched a joint letter to the appropriations committee asking for Hurricane aid help on Friday.
“A sturdy and well timed federal response, together with by supplemental applications and funding, might be required to make sure that ample assets are supplied to rebuild vital infrastructure and public providers capability, and to help our fellow Floridians in rebuilding their lives,” the duo wrote.
On September 24, Biden accredited federal emergency help for Florida. The federal authorities then “coordinated and prepositioned provides, and greater than 1,300 responders forward of Ian’s landfall to make sure assets might get the place they must be as shortly as potential,” in line with a Federal Emergency Administration Company press launch.
In a Sunday episode of ABC “This Week,” Anchor Jonathan Karl requested Rubio: “How’s FEMA doing? Is Florida getting the whole lot it wants proper now from the Biden Administration?”
“Yeah. FEMA, they’ve all been nice. As I’ve stated, the federal response from day one has been very constructive — because it has all the time been prior to now and we’re grateful for that,” Rubio replied.
—Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 2, 2022
Floridians, in the meantime, have expressed their frustration with the hurricane and the federal government’s response as they are saying assets are dwindling.
Rubio didn’t instantly reply to Insider’s request for remark.
