With the help of ten Republican Senators, Democrats last night muscled a measure through the Senate that would add almost $7 billion in disaster relief money to FEMA, setting up a battle next week with the House.
"I hope colleagues in the House will take up our bipartisan disaster relief bill and pass it without delay," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
The idea that Congress should look for budget cuts to pay for disaster aid thoroughly aggravates many Democrats, as they argue that Republicans are totally off-base with such plans.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi labeled such ideas a "dangerous precedent," though Republicans fully intend to do exactly that in the House next week.
"We say we need to cut spending, but we don't want to find any spending to cut to pay for it - we just want to borrow," said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), who mustered a majority in favor of a plan to find $7 billion in cuts - but he needed 60 votes to prevail.
Coburn won over seven Democrats in the Senate, getting 54 votes in all for his plan to get rid of duplicative spending - of those seven, five are running for re-election next year:
Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Sen. Clare McCaskill of Missouri, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Sen. John Tester of Montana are all on the ballot.
As for the Republicans who broke ranks with GOP leaders to vote for the aid bill - without any cuts - what ties them together is mainly the fact that disasters have either hit or often hit their states:
- Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri had the big Joplin tornadoes
- Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts had damage from Irene
- both Senators from Maine also saw Irene damage
- Sen. John Hoeven has had flooding in North Dakota
- Sen. Lisa Murkowski had flooding in Alaska this year
- Sen. Pat Toomey had Irene damage in Pennsylvania
- Sen. David Vitter had flooding in Louisiana last month
- Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida has to worry about hurricanes The tenth GOP Senator voting for the FEMA aid was Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada, the newest Senator of all. House Republicans have proposed $3.65 billion in extra FEMA aid, with offsetting budget cuts to pay for it. Democrats say that's unacceptable - we'll see what gets worked out next week.
