no one can replace those items and why this is such a tragedy. yesterday, jesse rodriguez, our senior producer, was actually out at a press gaggle that had the governor and several congressmen and senators and senator tom coburn was there. a good friend of mine. he suggested early on any spending on disaster relief should be offset by spending cuts somewhere else in the federal government. we asked senator coburn yesterday if that was still his position and let s take a listen. look. 11.8 billion in fema and not a legitimate question and i was asked that question yesterday before we even knew how many people had died so it s inappropriate. the fact is a lot of waste in the federal government and rather than borrow the money from the people we ought to help and it s not a problem and we don t have to do an emergency bill for this. we have plenty of money set aside to take care of this.
why isn t that remember, last week or the week before when we had the sandy bill, which should have been just an emergency bill for, it as a load down with pork that congress, both sides of the aisle, wipe out whatever additional revenues were coming in from the tax increase. they cannot stop themselves. the fiscal cliff. giveaways up and down the line, every interest group. who votes for it? the white house, biden demands to be in there re run republics go along as they always do, mitch m-connell and john boehner always flop at the last minute. so there s no spending cuts. and now we re going to have more revenues. it is really tomorrow is an opportunity for the president to really time is i wasting when you think about rouse obviously not
infrastructure you neil: you tell your constituents you are getting this aid, up to a third isn t coming to you so i would rather spike the two-thirds? no, no. the house should have been stripping this in committee and sending it back to the senate and let them send a pork-free bill neil: but they didn t do that. we have to get spending under control. that s the reality. unfortunately, this country has to deal with this economic reality. you know what? my constituents are going to pay for it in their taxes. what no one seems to want to talk about in the media. yes, congress will pass an emergency bill and exceed the spending cap congress voted on and then your taxes will be the makeup for that because there is no other place to get it from. neil: i admire your guts to stand up to the likes of chris christie, who said, quit playing games and pass the aid. you are saying, we are playing game fist we pass this kind of aid.
again and again and again. if the house is going to bitch and moan that the senate passed something they didn t like, instead of taking it on and going to reconciliation and fighting it out, how congress works, they ve got to stop complaining and rolling up their sleeves and get it done on time. megyn: is it that or is it that they saw some hypocrisy in senators like schumer who they say had loaded in some of the pork, then expressing outrage that they didn t give it the vote that he wanted? i don t know, mark, you it will me. there seem to be some republicans questioning why this is so focused on the house republicans as opposed to on president obama, on fema? where are they? they still have a bunch of money in the coffers and why isn t it getting spent? why is it all on john boehner? well, you re right. they were right to oppose the bill. it is potentially, at least 10 billion and potentially double the actual cost of the storm. there s no need to pass a 60 billion dollar emergen
$60 billion package. vote content two days from now for $9 billion. which is what theyed need to do immediate relief. fine. which will pass easily in both bodies. get speaker boehner credit for saving $51 billion. at least for now. there will be further appropriations but they may never get close to $60 billion. 20 years ago hurricane andrew hit in 92, severe in florida. went back to look up what the emergency bill to pay for that was. $7 billion. maybe sandy is ten times worse than hurricane andrew. i don t know. someone should take a close look at the money before they throw it out. to your point, give boehner credit. to hear anybody today on both sides of the aisle, they were slamming him. his name was mud on sound bites. how will it turn out? i am pro speaker boehner. he did take my call. they told him christie is on the other line, i m talking to bill kristol.