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President Joe Biden hasn’t submitted an emergency supplemental request for federal funds to repair the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge, but the House Freedom Caucus is already taking the funding hostage.
The extremists laid out their official position Friday, ahead of Biden’s trip to Baltimore to visit the site of the deadly bridge collapse and meet with officials and victims’ families. The hard-liners insist that any federal money only be used on bridge repairs, but are also demanding a White House policy reversal on an issue that has nothing to do with the bridge.
Biden is in Baltimore Friday to “deliver remarks reaffirming his commitment to the people of Baltimore.” Ahead of the trip, the White House issued a fact sheet detailing what the Biden administration has done so far and what it will take to restore the Port of Baltimore, calling it “essential to the regional economy and the national supply chain.” Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young also sent a letter to key House and Senate committee chairs asking for authorizing language for “a 100 percent Federal cost share for rebuilding the bridge.”
The House maniacs, as usual, don’t want to pay for it. They’ve been demanding the curtailing of disaster relief since the devastating 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster and insisting that any funding for recovery has to be taken out of other spending. In 2018, 179 Republicans voted against Hurricane Sandy relief, and in 2019, they held up a critical aid package for weeks that would help Puerto Rico and communities devastated by wildfire and extreme weather.
Of course, when it comes to emergency assistance to red states, that opposition fades.
As The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake pointed out in 2022, “only three of 18 House Republicans from Florida voted for the larger Sandy bill, but every one of them voted for the 2017 bill that included aid for their home state.” So much for fiscal discipline.
This time around—with aid going to the blue state of Maryland—the Freedom Caucus members are pulling out that old playbook, again insisting that any federal money has to come from cuts to other programs, and that “burdensome regulations” protecting workers and the environment be set aside when it comes to rebuilding.
Out of far-right field, they are also demanding that the administration reverse a temporary hold on liquified natural gas export approvals, dubiously arguing that it, “like the Baltimore harbor closure, has severe implications for foreign trade.” Republicans have been banging on about this for months, largely because the hold affects one red state: Speaker Mike Johnson’s home state of Louisiana.
Johnson has even tried to condition aid to Ukraine on lifting the export pause, laughably arguing on Fox News that “We want to have natural gas exports that will help unfund Vladimir Putin’s war effort.”
The White House quickly shut that argument down.
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GOP fights over Key Bridge repairs as House speaker remains silent
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Florida’s Supreme Court just greenlit a ballot measure to enshrine abortion in the state constitution—and simultaneously allowed the GOP’s new six-week abortion ban to become law. That makes the already-high stakes for this amendment even higher, as we discuss on this week’s episode of The Downballot. Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also talk about the death of New Jersey’s infamous “county line” and how the GOP managed to pick yet another whackjob candidate for yet another congressional special election.
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