Devastating for the region, making it the second costliest hurricane in the nations history. But what was worse than the actual devastation caused by sandy was the fallout that had nothing to do with the storm and everything to do with politics. If you think the recent 16day shutdown is the first sign that republicans are willing to break all the political rules in order to destroy government, not even close. Because the willingness by members of congress to choose not to vote for sandy relief was unprecedented. Remember, Superstorm Sandy made landfall in the u. S. Just before the president ial election between president barack obama and former massachusetts governor, mitt romney. But the election did not stop president obama from responding. He put Campaign Battleground travel on hold to tour the stormbattered coast of new jersey on october 31st. And his Immediate Reaction was to address the needs of the hurricane victims most in need. And it earned him the admiration of the republican governor of new jersey, Chris Christie. And it started an unlikely bromance. I was on the phone at midnight again last night with the president , personally. He has expedited the designation of new jersey as a major disaster area. He expedited that, was on the phone with fema at 2 00 a. M. This morning to answer the questions they needed answered, to get that designation. And the president has been outstanding in this. The president has been outstanding in this. So it was a bipartisan lovefest between president obama and governor christie. But there was a president ial election looming. An election that turned in large part on the belief that the gop candidate was an elitist who didnt understand regular people. An election that romney would go on to lose. And yet, Republican House members decided to take a stand against storm victims. While the democratled Senate Approved a 60. 4 billion hurricane recovery package, House Speaker john boehner initially blocked any house action on sandy aid legislation because of the price tag. Because at the same time that the victims of sandy needed the governments help, congress was trying to avoid a shutdown no, no, wait a minute, a default. Wait, back then it was a fiscal cliff. Sorry, just too much to keep straight. And thats how you know and thats when you begin to know that the House Republicans are honey badgers. They dont give a you know what. Speaker boehner and his honey badger posse seemed to forget that the northeast is not comprised simply of liberals, theyve got republicans there. And when bayoehner chose not to proceed with relief for sandy, they brought the smackdown. Unprecedented, disgusting, unworthy of the leadership of this house. They should reconsider or hang their heads in shame, mr. Speaker. That we would walk away without doing our part to help the people suffering in new york in new jersey, connecticut, pennsylvania, and other parts of the country is outrageous it is simply outrageous. Mr. Speaker, tonights action not to hold this vote on the implemental is absolutely indefensible. Everybody played by the rules, except tonight when the rug is pulled out from under us. Absolutely infusible, absolutely indefensible. We have a moral obligation to hold this vote mr. Speaker, we cannot turn our backs on our citizens who need us and just as quickly as Chris Christie had started that bromance with president obama, he was willing to call out the speaker of the house. Theres only one group to blame for the continued suffering of these innocent victims, the House Majority and their speaker, john boehner. Yeah, john boehner. How did you like it when the gops golden child of the moment called you out for your shenanigans. Apparently not much since you and eric cantor released this statement the same day. Getting critical aid to the victims of Hurricane Sandy should be the First Priority in the new congress, and that was reaffirmed today with members of the new york and new jersey delegations. In all, it took the house 78 days after Superstorm Sandy battered the northeast to pass their 51 billion sandy relief bill. House republicans will tell you because there was just too much pork in the senate bill, just like theyll tell you the Government Shutdown had to happen because of obama care. You see, sandy is the prime example of how republicans manage a crisis. Some politicians like Chris Christie know when to be grateful for federal intervention and when to call out their own party when it is acting a fool. But others, well, they just refuse to help, while they huff and puff and stomp their feet on the ground to get what they want. So holding aid or health care hostage is nothing new. What could be new are the repercussions that republicans could face in 2014 and 2016 for acting like they do not care about people and denying the very causes of the crisis that affect them. With me at the table this morning are kathy zito, a Staten Island resident who is still rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy. David rowdy, a Foreign Affairs columnist for reuters who wrote last year about the inequality Hurricane Sandy exposed. Eric, author of heat wave, and james perry, executive director of the greater new orleans fair Housing Action center, who advised members to their response of sandy, and in the interest of the full disclosure, hes also my husband. David, it did feel like part of the government response to sandy this time was difficult, because fema performed better than it had in some sort of recent massive disasters, yet we saw congress behaving badly. So a year out now, can we say, do we have a clear assessment of how our government responded to this disaster . I think the city, and you can say more about this than me, there was some good response to this. And even in the clips i showed, i want to give those northeast republicans credit. And even this week, the sanity caucus stood up to the suicide caucus is that what were calling them . The stanity caucus . I like that. Mitch mcconnell, of all, and peter king, standing up saying, you need government in some situations and you cant deny aid for hurricanes and you cant also play with defaults. So there was a real difference in the response of the government, but we still have a real problem with this divide in the country and its not getting any better and, you know, the resistance in the tea party is still from some of the poorest parts of the country. Yeah these are votes in areas democrats should do better in, to be frank. Least, health insurance, the worst futures, and why is that happening. Eric, it feels to me, your work in part on disaster is less about the disaster and more about what it exposes, the social autopsy it tells us about who is vulnerable. What did we learn from sandy, both about who was vulnerable in that moment, but also sort of our broader political vulnerability . Its interesting. If you think about the debate we had over katrina, a lot of it was about inequality and race and the underlying vulnerability weve actually said less about. Those dimensions of vulnerability with sandy, even though lowincome new yorkers, for instance, were more likely to be displaced and to suffer longterm consequences than were wealthy homeowners. Now the underlying vulnerability is about Climate Change, how were going to relate to this dramatic environment in which we see storm surges and extreme weather. We face Big Questions now. Not about how to build it back, but how to build forward in anticipation of more things like this. Right. And well talk as we go forward about the fact that even that notion that we are vulnerable to Climate Change is apparently up for debate in our current congress. Or the sanity caucus. Im about to use that just all the time. So james, part of what you did after sandy, you were here talking to communities about your experiences of leadership postkatrina. What advice did you have for northeastern communities about how to hold people accountable . More important than talking to the communities, i spoke to the Christie Administration itself, and i said, learn from our mistakes in louisiana. For instance, we had bad contractors who did a terrible job. Dont hire them. Heres the list. But they hired them anyway. For instance, hgi is managing a major rebuilding contract for the state of new jersey and theyre doing a terrible job. And you know, told you so. Right. So i think that the real difficulty here is that we havent learned from past disasters and past failures. This idea of learning from them, it always feels to me, kathy, is in part because the voices of the people most impacted are often most silent. So we end up hearing from policy makers and not from people who are impacted on the ground. Its a year later. Where are you in your process . Im one of the lucky ones. I am back in my home. Im back in since the beginning of july. Im back in without furniture, without having insurance money. My contractor and friends have been the ones that have paid for everything. To pay the subcontractor, so you can continue to move forward. Not everyone is that lucky. Its a disaster. How do you pay for Flood Insurance, your entire time being there . 30 years being there, paid it, had no problems, you had a flood, wheres my money . They give you a little bit in the money and the supplemental is now eight months later. No one answers your questions. Me and clive is on a firstname basis, he tells me, maam, one more time, im going to fly through the phone, im done with it all. We have an increase in Flood Insurance, so my family who have little bungalows all along the beach instead of paying 11,000 a year are paying 31,000 a year. We lost everything, our homes were destroyed, our businesses were destroyed. The area on my house from highland boulevard to my home is four blocks. Not city blocks, little blocks, and we have 13 homes no ones living in. Thats just that far. Thats not going towards the water yet. James, how familiar are stories like this to you eight years after katrina in new orleans. As you know, if you drive through the lower ninth ward today, it is a vacant field, essentially, because nothing is happening. Theres been so many stories about how many money has been allocated, but still eight years out, the lower ninth ward is not recovering, not even close. And we talk about this each time we see each other, but its a long haul. And unfortunately, its going to be a long time its not what i want to do. I dont want a long haul. Ive paid my taxes, im sick of government, our mayor is a moron. Thats the nicest word i have for him, and im holding my hand so i dont have anything else. He rebuilt our beaches, that was an important factor when were living in total despair and disgusting conditions. And as we go out, i want to come back on this, because this is in part a fundamental question about what government is for. When you say that, when you say, im sick of government and its because of the lack of protection. But i want to remind people that part of how we ended up with this sanity versus suicide caucus is because the club for growth and other conservative organizations actually urged senators to vote no on Hurricane Sandy, on the relief bill for Hurricane Sandy, hr1, which is scheduled for consideration in the Upper Chamber that week. And the vote on the final passage and perhaps procedural votes would be included in the clubs 2012 congressional scorecard. So conservatives were being scored on whether or not they voted against you getting the kind of need help that you needed. So well think more about that when we come back. Because when we come back, the hits keep on coming. And the victims of the storm are still suffering, maybe for very avoidable reasons still a year later. For seeing your business in a whole new way. For seeing what cash is coming in and going out. So you can understand every angle of your cash flow last week, this month, and even next year. For seeing your businesss cash flow like never before, introducing cash flow insight powered by pnc cfo. A suite of online tools that lets you turn insight into action. [ ding ] losing your chex mix too easily . Time to deploy the boringpopcorn decoy bucket. Then no one will want to steal the deliciousness. With a variety of tastes and textures only chex mix is a bag of interesting. As we approach the oneyear anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, were hearing about lingering issues that still persist from the storm, like sandy lung, which may be causing reps pratory issues for new jersey joer residents and first responders. Or homeless sandy residents getting evicted from New York Hotel rooms because the government ruled the program was too costly to continue. Or from families having to decide between skyrocketing Flood Insurance premiums and rebuilding. And as a reminder that disaster is not just a shortterm crisis, disaster creates longterm problems that takes responsible, collective action to truly address them. And eric, i want to come to you on this. As we think about disasters, whether it is the heat wave in chicago many years ago or katrina or Superstorm Sandy, they always teach us something about infrastructure, about both our human infrastructure, our political infrastructure, and our literal infrastructure. What lessons have we been failing to learn about that . Well, theres a few right now, and theyre urgent. So glad year talking about it. First of all, the power grid and the Energy Infrastructure is really out of date. I live in lower manhattan. I had a blackout. There was water getting up to the floor where i live, it was a bad situation. And i was like a lot of people in lower manhattan, i couldnt really believe that the powers that be out there would let us be dark for one day, two days, a full week. But clearly we are behind the times and need to do something to get smarter, more resilient grids, and thats going to take a serious investment. We also learned something about the communications infrastructure, which failed miserably. So when i was sitting at home, trying to reach out to my 94yearold stepfather who was also in the dark and to friends and family to find out what was happening in our city, i couldnt do that. There was no service. And the cell service routinely fails. It turns out that a growing number of americans rely on this for communication. They dont have land lines, right. But the phone industry, the mobile phone industry has pushed very hard to make sure theyre regulated as an entertainment industry, not as a lifeline industry that provides public services. So they routinely fail. Look, we are now in a situation where people in cities throughout this country expect that the power will go out and the communications grid will go out, and even the Transit System will go out during all kinds of ordinary summer weather. We are living like people in developing nations that dont have nearly the kind of wealth and security that we have. And if theres ever been a moment where we need to recognize the challenge before us, this is it. So, david, as i listen to eric talk about that kind of infrastructure, i think, if ever there were a bipartisan sort of thing that one could get around, it would be this. Like, electricity. Not a partisan issue, right . Cell phone towers, not a racial question, right . These should be the few places where right now, there would be enough political will to do the kind of Government Spending we need. And yet, that doesnt seem to be true. No, its not happening. Its a great point you mentioned. I saw this earlier today. The output economically of the new york metro areas is around 17 trillion. Thats roughly the equivalent of all of canada. Its more than all of australia. The money is here, why arent we investing it . One positive thing is that bill deblasio in his mayoral run has made inequality his core issue. That has really caught fire with people in the city. Theyre excited with how you address it. The problem is, the things hes proposing to do are not going to make it through the state legislature in albany. So youve got gridlock in albany and washington, stopping a positive Political Development in the city. So this point about cities and the state legislature, that as a louisiana resident, right, living in new orleans, that idea that you could have reasonable leadership in the city that recognizes the need for infrastructure development, that simply cant get through a bobby jindal, for example. Yeah. Its one of the Amazing Things about the Christie Obama bromance, that two parties from different parties actually agree to work together. Because as you know, in louisiana, we had two people from different parties who hated each other and the governor and the president s position. But still, i think that the issue is not really with whether or not these two parties can get along, the problem is that there is a conservative push that says, we are going to do whatever it takes to lower the amount of money that government has and that the government spends. And so we are ready to go through any disaster, a disaster for our party, a disaster for ourselves as individuals, and disasters for our communities in order to lower government funding and spending. Again, not to sour the bromance here, because i love the love, but lets recall that Chris Christie refused to take the federal dollars that were going to build another tunnel, to improve the Transit System, so that we had better capacity to move from new york to new jersey. And that