Pelosi doubles down on opposition to GOP disaster-aid bill (The Hill)

[chill_wind]

Pelosi doubles down on opposition to GOP disaster-aid bill
By Mike Lillis - 09/22/11 12:46 PM ET

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday doubled down on the Democrats' opposition to a GOP bill that would offset disaster assistance with cuts elsewhere in the budget.

The California Democrat said her troops simply won't tie the emergency disaster funding to debate over deficit reduction.

(snip)

House Democrats, meanwhile, are reveling in their rare budget victory.

"Now the Republicans have to go back and put together a bill that meets our needs for disaster and is not an anti-jobs bill," said Rep. Sandy Levin (Mich.), senior Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee. "Democrats basically united on both counts."

Levin said the Democrats have taken a strategic lesson from Wednesday's surprise vote: "Stand up for what we believe," he said. "Don't be cowed by the notion that it's a CR therefore you have to buy anything."

more: http://thehill.com/homenews/house/183267-pelosi-doubles-down-on-opposition-to-gop-disaster-aid-bill

:thumbsup:

[pinto]

1. Kick

:kick:

[chill_wind]

2. I've been curious who the 6 Dems were that broke

and voted FOR the bad bill. They were:

Altmire, Holden, Kissell, McCarthy, Michaud and Welch

It will remain very interesting. On this much, Boehner is being handed his butt. He couldn't whip up his votes. But we didn't get 48 ultra-conservative GOPhers' to defect because they agreed policy-wise with US. It was all, again, for them about the spending, which was also pointed out in pieces at TPM, The Hill etc yesterday.

Conservative blog moaning about their Uber-Conservatives' vote against the CR:

http://heritageaction.com/2011/09/cr-fails-in-house/

Who knows what they and Boehner will do next.

Still, a victory itself for us these days is a victory. Very importantly right now we have them in the corner.

The reason that the minority Democrats had leverage at all was because House conservatives refused to vote for the stopgap bill, which funds the government for two months in Fiscal Year 2012 at the level of spending agreed to in the debt limit deal. Those 48 conservatives wanted to break the deal and cut spending to a lower level than the agreed-upon amount. And John Boehner couldn’t whip them to his side.

That gave House Democrats the opportunity to stop the bill, on the grounds that the disaster relief funding for FEMA was far too low and that it would break long-standing precedent to offset emergency relief for a natural disaster. As you can see by the roll call, only six Democrats – Altmire, Holden, Kissell, McCarthy, Michaud and Welch – voted with the Republicans in favor of the bill. That wasn’t enough to pass it, and it failed 190-235.

Earlier in the day, House leaders whipped the vote in an attempt to get a united front against the bill. That largely succeeded; the only votes against were either members in severely hurricane-ravaged areas who wanted to see at least some disaster funding (like Welch of Vermont or Michaud of Maine), or the usual Blue Dog suspects.

ETA link: http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/09/21/democrats-win-a-round-stop-house-cr-with-offset-disaster-relief/