Did Trump Give Any Money To Hurricane Sandy

WASHINGTON — Funding for Amtrak's Gateway project, which includes a new tunnel under the Hudson River, was non touched in the $15 billion package of upkeep "rescission" requests that President Trump's administration sent to Congress on Tuesday.

But Trump did advise rescinding $107 million in Superstorm Sandy aid, and the cut has added fuel to a fire burning in the New Jersey delegation that sees the state as under attack from Washington.

"Coming on the heels of a tax scam they bragged was designed to hurt the Northeast, Republicans at present want to take abroad $107 one thousand thousand to help my state continue its recovery from Hurricane Sandy," said Rep. Neb Pascrell Jr., D-Paterson.

"They want to kick New Jerseyans while we're down all over again. Information technology's insult to second injury and chutzpah doesn't fifty-fifty begin to comprehend it," Pascrell said.

Rep. Donald Norcross, D-Camden, also reached for some Yiddish.

"Y'all'd have to be an anti-Jersey schmuck to support this," Norcross said. "The 'moocher land' Republicans that voted against Sandy aid in the first place are at present trying to employ every trick in the book to suck New Jersey dry out."

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-Paramus, said the state remains too vulnerable to another storm to cutting funding.

"It is reprehensible for Republicans to try to lessen the blow of their $2 trillion, deficit-busting, corporate tax cut on the backs of Sandy victims," Menendez said.

Whether the cut would really injure the state or storm victims is debatable.

The $107 meg — which Congress could cutting using a fast-track process that avoids a Senate filibuster — would come from the Department of Agriculture'southward Emergency Watershed Protection program. The funding was originally approved in early 2013 equally part of the nearly $lx billion parcel of bills primarily for New Jersey and New York recovery from Sandy, which struck in the October 2012.

Documents from the Office of Direction and Upkeep say the watershed money has not been spent "due to the inability of project sponsors to generate the funding necessary for their portion of the projection expenses." In other words, states or localities that could admission the assist have not put up the necessary matching funds.

Simply whether the cut has a real bear upon, the symbolism has stoked anger in the delegation that has been growing since the tax overhaul signed in December put a new $10,000 cap on the federal deduction for state and local taxes. That limitation volition hit harder in New Jersey than but about any other state.

Trump veto threat

Trump followed that with a threat in March to veto a spending neb to continue the government operating if it included funding for Gateway, the Amtrak project that includes a new tunnel under the Hudson and Due east rivers and replaces bridges in the Meadowlands that are more than than a century old.

The spending bill he ultimately signed did put virtually $500 meg in transportation accounts that could exist tapped to get Gateway started, but the money has not been awarded yet by the assistants.

And concluding month more than than two dozen lawmakers led by Rep Ted Budd, R-North.C., urged White Firm upkeep manager Mick Mulvaney to ax the Gateway funds in the rescission package.

That did not happen this week because Republican leaders in the Senate had said the March spending parcel was a bipartisan agreement and they did not want to renege on the bargain. But if the latest rescission package passes, conservatives expect there will exist more of them following, and future bills all the same could go after the Gateway money.

"The strategy is now to get later on us on every single front end," Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-Wyckoff, said at an April 27 news conference where he and five New Jersey colleagues derided the possibility of rescinding the Gateway funding.

Budd'southward letter said New Jersey and New York are two of the wealthiest states in the state and should exist able to fund the tunnel themselves, but Gottheimer said taxes from New Jersey that flow through Washington help N Carolina become more back than its residents pay. .

"They're picking states like ours that historically have really just moved resources over to prop them up," he said.

Red State vs. Bluish State

Rep. Frank Pallone, D-Long Branch, said the fight has become "blood-red state vs. blue state" and New Jersey is being targeted because it did not vote for Trump in 2016. Simply he besides brought up the fight over aid afterward Sandy, the worst storm in land history.

"We were trying to get the package passed that we had a lot of the Republicans and members from the South and the West who said they didn't want to pay for it," Pallone said.

"And yet, last summer, when they had the devastating hurricanes in Florida and Texas, we, because nosotros believe in this land as a whole and we think this is one country, non a collection of states, we concluded upward voting for the disaster assist for them."

Information technology does not aid that upkeep director Mulvaney had a hand in the $107 million cut, because he tried, unsuccessfully, when he was a congressman from Southward Carolina to crave $17 billion in budget cuts to offset a part of the Sandy assistance packet sponsored by Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-Harding.

The White Business firm did not insist on offsets for the Texas or Florida assistance that passed in several bills.

Congress can accept some or all of the cuts Trump is proposing, and the first cease for that decision volition be the House and Senate appropriations committees. That means Appropriations Commission Chairman Frelinghuysen could foreclose the Sandy aid from being cut now.

He is non proverb what he'll do, however. Frelinghuysen, who is retiring at the end of this term, walked by a reporter going to vote Tuesday and ignored a question almost the rescissions package. His part also did non respond to requests for comment.

But Republican leaders in Congress face pressure level to deliver budget cuts considering conservative members and exterior groups are upset the GOP failed to repeal the Affordable Care Human action and then canonical a budget deal that increased spending for defense and domestic programs.

Some New Jersey Republicans running for re-ballot this year have concerns near the White Firm proposal, however.

Rep. Leonard Lance, a Republican from Clinton Township who was the lone Republican to join 5 Democrats at that April news briefing, said this week he opposes cutting the Sandy aid even though he recognizes the money has not been spent.

"I hope those funds can be utilized and practise not want to prohibit the possibility they could exist utilized," he said.

Lance also said he has problems with the biggest cut in the rescissions package, about $7 billion from the Children's Health Insurance Plan that OMB says tin't be spent or will not probable be spent this year.

"I don't desire to injure children in any way,"  Lance said. "Both of these are very serious concerns of mine."

Rep. Tom MacArthur, a Republican from Toms River who has cast the nearly votes in the delegation to support Trump assistants policies, said he also had problems with the cuts to Sandy and Flake funding.

"I haven't read them all, simply I have two pretty significant reasons why I accept a problem with it," MacArthur said Tuesday night.

Source: https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/new-jersey/2018/05/10/trumps-cut-sandy-aid-seen-pattern-dc-going-after-new-jersey/591666002/

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