90,000 Bridges in America Are “Obsolete”; One Of Them Fell Down On Thursday

 Austerity, Economy, Infrastructure, Obama Administration, President Obama, Public Safety, Republicans, Spending Cuts, States, Tea Party movement  No Responses »
May 242013
 

(KOMO News)

Renewed attention is being given to the state of the nation’s roads and bridges following a terrifying incident outside of Seattle on Thursday, with critics arguing the event proves the danger in putting off crucial fixes to America’s public infrastructure.

A highway bridge carrying lanes of Interstate 5 over the Skagit River in Washington state crumbled late Thursday night, sending cars and their trapped occupants into the water below. Initial blame is being leveled at an oversize truck that may have struck a portion of the structure’s girders and destabilized the bridge section that subsequently fell apart.

Miraculously, the accident left no fatalities and only minor injuries to the three motorists that happened to be driving on the bridge when it collapsed. Emergency officials say they have accounted for everyone believed to be in the area at the time of the disaster, and that everyone is safe.

The safety of all victims assured, focus has shifted to the transportation nightmare that the bridge failure is already causing. I-5 is a major roadway in the greater Seattle metropolitan area and carries vital commercial and commuter traffic. Thursday’s event has “totally disrupted” the highway corridor and will likely do so for weeks or months as plans for replacing the bridge are finalized.

An Interstate 5 bridge over a river collapsed north of Seattle Thursday evening, dumping two vehicles into the water and sparking a rescue effort by boats and divers as three injured people were pulled from the chilly waterway.

Authorities said it appeared nobody was killed in the bridge failure that raised the question about the safety of aging spans and cut off the main route between Seattle and Canada.

“We don’t think anyone else went into the water,” said Marcus Deyerin, a spokesman for the Northwest Washington Incident Management Team. “At this point we’re optimistic.”

A man and a woman were reported in stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries in the emergency room at Skagit Valley Hospital, hospital spokeswoman Kari Ranten said. Another man was reported in stable condition at United General Hospital in Sedro-Woolley, hospital CEO Greg Reed said. He said he didn’t know whether the man would be admitted.

Survivor Dan Sligh and his wife were driving their pickup truck when he said the bridge disappeared before them in a “big puff of dust.”

…….

Traffic along the heavily-travelled route could be impacted for some time.

“The I-5 corridor is totally disrupted,” said Gov. Jay Inslee, who went to the scene Thursday night.

He said work has already started to design detour, but state Transportation Secretary Lynn Peterson asked people to avoid I-5 in the area for the next several days.

Being that bridges crumbling under travelers on major highways is an unsettling prospect, authorities have quickly moved to determine the exact reason the Skagit span came down.

Most signs pointed to a single “oversize” truck that clipped a section of the girders holding the bridge together, sending a considerable chunk of it immediately crashing into the river. So far, nothing points directly to an independent structural failure due to disrepair or neglect. However, several factors shed light on how delays and reduced funding for infrastructure projects such as bridge repairs did play a significant role in Thursday’s near-tragedy.

The Skagit span was built in 1955. This means that, in addition to operational age, the span lacked modern safety features and construction techniques that would have likely prevented such a catastrophic mass failure when struck by a vehicle.

The Skagit River Bridge wasn’t particularly worrisome to state engineers. Structural inspections showed its condition to be average. But bridges of its generation, circa 1955, often were designed in a manner described today as fracture-critical — meaning a failure in a key location can ruin an entire span.

Which is apparently what happened Thursday night.

Officials believe an oversized truck traveling south on Interstate 5 hit the bridge and triggered the collapse, said Bart Treece, state Department of Transportation (DOT) spokesman. One of the bridge’s four spans fell into the water.

Though officials insist there was nothing “bad” about this particular bridge, its age and archaic construction make it possible that “complete collapse” would occur with the failure of any single component.

“It doesn’t imply anything bad about the bridge. It just means that if a certain component fails, it can lead to the complete collapse of the bridge,” said Jugesh Kapur, former head of bridges and structures for the DOT.

Kapur said a truck hitting a vertical or diagonal part of the truss certainly is capable of causing a failure. Guardrails or similar barriers are supposed to prevent strikes.

But besides its basic age and how it was put together, there were actually a considerable number of safety warnings about this specific bridge and detailed reports of its considerable “deficiencies.”

The Skagit River I-5 bridge was labeled “functionally obsolete” and “structurally deficient” in various federal and state reports — one of them more than twenty years ago. While having little meaning to the general public, these terms are important distinctions for architects and public officials charged with overseeing roads and bridges.

As early as 1992, the bridge that fell apart on Thursday was deemed “structurally deficient” and in immediate need of at least $8.2 million in repairs. Two years later, it was deemed “functionally obsolete” because of its age and not “adequate for modern traffic.

The Skagit bridge was rated “structurally deficient” in 1992, needing $8.3 million in fixes, according to a report by uglybridges.com, which cites the National Bridge Inventory data for that year. There was erosion on the stream banks below, and serious road-deck damage or wear. By 1994, the federal database listed the bridge as “functionally obsolete,” an improved rating but an indication it still wasn’t adequate for modern traffic.

The “sufficiency rating” of the Skagit bridge was also quite poor; a 57 rating out of a possible 100. Most alarmingly, that score actually bested nearly 800 of Washington’s other highway bridge structures, which were given a “C-” grade just days before Thursday’s incident by the American Society of Civil Engineers.”

In other words, the bridge that fell down was actually in better shape than most of Washington State’s bridges or even other bridges along the same I-5 corridor.

The bridge was built in 1955 and has a sufficiency rating of 57.4 out of 100, according to federal records. That is well below the statewide average rating of 80, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data, but 759 bridges in the state have a lower sufficiency score.

According to a 2012 Skagit County Public Works Department, 42 of the county’s 108 bridges that are 50 years or older. The document says eight of the bridges are more than 70 years old and two are over 80.

Washington state was given a C in the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2013 infrastructure report card and a C- when it came to the state’s bridges. The group said more than a quarter of Washington’s 7,840 bridges are considered structurally deficient of functionally obsolete.

Images of the Skagit accident outside of Seattle may have proven familiar to anyone that remembers a similar, though considerably more tragic, bridge collapse just six years ago. That was in 2007, when an interstate bridge span in downtown Minneapolis gave way and sent dozens of cars into a river, killing 13 and injuring hundreds.

The Minnesota disaster eventually was deemed preventable after information was subsequently revealed showing that span was likewise “structurally deficient” and decades behind in necessary repairs.

Inadequate and potentially dangerous bridges can be found all across the country, meaning tens of millions of Americans likely travel over them every day. The most recent National Bridge Inventory is a sobering document that shows nearly 90,000 bridges in the United States are officially listed as “obsolete,” and more than 70,000 are “structurally deficient” and in need of immediate repair.

An almost unimaginable backlog of bridge repairs and vital fixes has piled up in every corner of the nation. The same civil engineer group that gave a poor rating to Washington state’s bridge infrastructure gave an only slightly better “C+” grade to the entire US network of bridges. They estimate that it would require spending $21 billion every year just to fix the backlog of dangerous bridges in the country.

It doesn’t take a policy expert to understand that not only has such funding not been directed to bridges or any manner of national infrastructure in recent years, but that any future substantive action to combat the documented crisis is almost guaranteed not to happen.

Calculations have determined that it will take nearly three trillion dollars in federal spending by 2020 — many times what the government invests now — just to prevent the worst and most disastrous consequences from an aging and fragile national infrastructure. Without such a “critically important” investment, severe and long-lasting economic impacts will begin to be felt by Americans,.

Ignoring a crumbling infrastructure system means jobs will be lost, prices for almost every consumer item will go up, and the daily commute of millions of Americans in major population centers will become even moe unbearable than it curently is.

“Infrastructure is the most important thing you never think about,” said Jim Hoecker, former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. “Infrastructure is a collection of critically important strategic assets, and we generally take them for granted.”

If the problem is not addressed, power outages will become more frequent, prices at the supermarket and department store will inch up, traffic will detour around bad bridges, household incomes will drop and millions of people will lose their jobs.

The challenge of rebuilding a post-World War II infrastructure at the end of its natural life — roads, bridges, the electrical grid, water and sewer systems, ports — has been well documented by myriad experts. One of the most meticulous accounts has come in a series of reports by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), which delved into each failing system to calculate not just the cost of restoration but the economic and personal price of doing too little or nothing at all.

The exclamation point on the “Failure to Act” reports came Tuesday in an ASCE paper: An investment of $2.7 trillion is needed by 2020; likely funding available, $1.6 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office says combined federal, state and local spending for roads and bridges now amounts to about $160 billion.

The federal government and Congress appropriate nothing close to the amount experts declare is necessary to repair and sustain America’s vast and economically vital infrastructure network. Even worse has been the prevalence of deep cuts by states to funds and programs meant to keep roads and bridges functioning and safe.

This is a combination that has led to a cratering of spending on public construction projects, with a reduction of more than $50 billion since President Obama’s stimulus plan in 2009. And not since at least 1993 has  spending on infrastructure a smaller percentage of overall economic output.

In raw dollars, the decline is obvious. From a peak of about $325 billion in March 2009, the monthly amount has plummeted to $258 billion — a big number to upgrade your house, but less so for the entire country.

 But when you compare spending to the entire economic output of the country — how much of what we make that’s spent on public construction — the picture becomes more stark. We haven’t spent this little of our economic output on public construction since before 1993.

Many of the cuts can be attributed to the overall economic stagnation and tighter budgets wrought by the recession. But other factors are at play, including an inability by President Obama to get results on his repeated efforts to boost investment in infrastructure by posturing it as a job-creation program meant to employ millions of out-of-work Americans.

But the president’s lobbying efforts produced few results and largely focused on “shovel-ready” proposals selected for the number of jobs they would create, not based on safety factors.

But nothing has hastened the decline of public investment than the rise of the Tea Party, Republican control of the House, and an overall growing aversion of federal authority. Since the president took office, Congress has allocated even less money than usual for infrastructure projects even as the need for such funds grew exponentially.

Just as in 2007 after the deadly Minneapolis disaster, no one expects the fallout from this week’s Washington State bridge collapse to move the political needle on infrastructure repairs. 

It’s almost as if Washington has seen this movie before: a bridge collapses, groups decry the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and Congress does nothing.

Like the tragic Minneapolis, Minn. bridge collapse in 2007 that came before it, today’s Mount Vernon, Washington collapse is unlikely to spur Congress to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into fixing roads and bridges.

The political inertia in Washington around transportation funding and projects hasn’t eased despite President Obama’s nearly constant push for additional funding.

In February, Obama renewed his nearly annual call for $50 billion in additional transportation and infrastructure spending as part of his 2014 budget request. But Republicans said the proposal amounted to an unfunded wish list.

To be sure, Congress did pass a highway transportation funding bill last year, but infrastructure spending advocates say it’s simply not enough. The bill allocated just enough money to keep transportation spending at status quo levels and it only funded projects for two years, as opposed to the usual five or six.

So how much is enough?

For roads and bridges alone, the Federal Highway Administration estimates that every year $190 billion would need to be infused into the system compared to the $103 billion currently being spent.

When you take into consideration all of the country’s infrastructure, the American Society of Civil Engineers says that about $3.6 trillion is needed by 2020 to fix the country’s mounting problems.

 

New York Times: Bank Lobbyists Writing Financial Reform Bills

 Banks, Campaign Finance, Congress, Economy, Government Regulation, Lobbyists, Republicans, Special Interests, Wall Street  No Responses »
May 242013
 

Three years after Congress passed what supporters claimed were unprecedented federal regulations meant to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial collapse, lobbyists for banks and Wall Street firms have more sway than ever on Capitol Hill.

House Financial Services Committee chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling

Republicans and some Democrats have targeted the package passed in 2010, known as Dodd-Frank, for intense criticism. Conservatives decry the string of comprehensive new regulations as onerous and guilty of stunting economic growth.

Financial industry interests have also complained, flooding lawmakers who want to rewrite Dodd-Frank with cash in the last two election cycles and gaining new influence when Republicans seized control of the House.

This political alliance has begun paying handsome dividends for financial companies as legislators hostile to the new regulations are willing to go to considerable lengths to make sure the industries covered by the oversight are given a chance to craft reforms more to their liking.

The New York Times reports on Friday that House Republicans working on bills to repeal Dodd-Frank and loosen myriad other financial regulations have allowed banking lobbyists to draft much of the legislation themselves. Three-quarters of the language in one bill that easily passed the House Financial Services Committee had been written by lobbyists for Citigroup. Industry officioals defend such a practice as “common” in Washington.

Wall Street and big banks, once reviled as the driving forces of the 2008 market crash and subsequent recession, have seen their reputations significantly polished in the nation’s capital. Banks and their lobbyists now enjoy a “resurgent influence” with business-friendly Republicans and election-wary Democrats in Congress.

Bank lobbyists are not leaving it to lawmakers to draft legislation that softens financial regulations. Instead, the lobbyists are helping to write it themselves.

One bill that sailed through the House Financial Services Committee this month — over the objections of the Treasury Department — was essentially Citigroup’s, according to e-mails reviewed by The New York Times. The bill would exempt broad swathes of trades from new regulation.

In a sign of Wall Street’s resurgent influence in Washington, Citigroup’s recommendations were reflected in more than 70 lines of the House committee’s 85-line bill. Two crucial paragraphs, prepared by Citigroup in conjunction with other Wall Street banks, were copied nearly word for word. (Lawmakers changed two words to make them plural.)

The lobbying campaign shows how, three years after Congress passed the most comprehensive overhaul of regulation since the Depression, Wall Street is finding Washington a friendlier place.

The cordial relations now include a growing number of Democrats in both the House and the Senate, whose support the banks need if they want to roll back parts of the 2010 financial overhaul, known as Dodd-Frank.

This legislative push is a second front, with Wall Street’s other battle being waged against regulators who are drafting detailed rules allowing them to enforce the law.

The payoff for both sides in the equation is incredibly attractive. Financial companies have been able to ingratiate themselves with lawmakers already receptive to their calls for fewer regulations by spending huge sums on lavish lobbying events and bankrolling scores of congressional candidates.

And as its lobbying campaign steps up, the financial industry has doubled its already considerable giving to political causes. The lawmakers who this month supported the bills championed by Wall Street received twice as much in contributions from financial institutions compared with those who opposed them, according to an analysis of campaign finance records performed by MapLight, a nonprofit group.

In recent weeks, Wall Street groups also held fund-raisers for lawmakers who co-sponsored the bills. At one dinner Wednesday night, corporate executives and lobbyists paid up to $2,500 to dine in a private room of a Greek restaurant just blocks from the Capitol with Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, Democrat of New York, a co-sponsor of the bill championed by Citigroup.

Industry officials acknowledged that they played a role in drafting the legislation, but argued that the practice was common in Washington. Some of the changes, they say, have gained wide support, including from Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman. The changes, they added, were in an effort to reach a compromise over the bills, not to undermine Dodd-Frank.

It’s unlikely to be a coincidence that the chairman of the House committee in charge of financial industry oversight and at the center of granting direct access by lobbyists to the drafting of important regulatory bills has been wined and dined by some of the nation’s leading banks.

According to Pro Publica, Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling met with several banking executives at an exclusive Utah ski resort — complete with a celebrity chef to cater the event — only weeks after attaining chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee. That is the same committee now discovered to be letting lobbyists for Citigroup and other banks draft legislation intended to gut federal financial regulations.

The posh party for Hensarling’s campaign PAC may not have breached any election laws, but it presented an “invaluable opportunity” for financial companies and their lobbyists.

In January, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, ascended to the powerful chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee. Six weeks later, campaign finance filings and interviews show, Hensarling was joined by representatives of the banking industry for a ski vacation fundraiser at a posh Park City, Utah, resort.

The congressman’s political action committee held the fundraiser at the St. Regis Deer Valley, the “Ritz-Carlton of ski resorts”known for its “white-glove service” and for its restaurant by superstar chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

There’s no evidence the fundraiser broke any campaign finance rules. But a ski getaway with Hensarling, whose committee oversees both Wall Street and its regulators, is an invaluable opportunity for industry lobbyists.

Landmark Immigration Reform Likely To Exclude Protections For LGBT Couples

 Civil Rights, Congress, Democrats, Gay marriage, Hispanic Americans, Immigration, LGBT Rights, Republicans  No Responses »
May 232013
 

Historic progress on efforts in Congress to reform the nation’s immigration laws and offer a path to citizenship to undocumented individuals and families could come at the expense of what many consider t be a basic recognition of gay rights.

Working from a blueprint compiled by the so-called “Gang of Eight,” moderate Democrats and Republican lawmakers that have long championed changes to immigration policy, the Senate on Tuesday passed a final immigration bill out of a key committee in a move that triggers a full vote on the measure. Senators on the Judiciary Committee approved the sweeping immigration legislation in a stunning bipartisan 13-5 vote, with important Republicans joining with Democrats in support.

Democrats on Capitol Hill and most Hispanic and immigrant advocacy groups cheered the Senate vote as a monumental step towards a more human national immigration policy and one that could bring millions of undocumented men, women and children out of the shadows and help them to eventually attain citizenship.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the bipartisan “gang of eight” immigration bill on Tuesday in a 13 to 5 vote after a marathon final day of markup that stretched into the evening.

All Democrats on the committee, along with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and gang of eight Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), voted in favor of the bill, which will now go to the Senate floor. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who voted against the bill out of committee, said he would support allowing it to move forward for debate — rather than joining a filibuster — once on the Senate floor. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who was also a “no” vote, said if it had been between his vote and moving the bill to the Senate floor, he would have voted in favor.

The crowd in the room erupted into applause when the final vote tally was read, rising to their feet and chanting “Yes we can!” then “Si se puede!”

Democrats seemed equally pleased to vote the bill out of committee.

“The dysfunction in our current immigration system affects all of us and it is long past time for reform,” Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said before the bill’s passage. “I hope that our history, our values, and our decency can inspire us finally to take action. We need an immigration system that lives up to American values and helps write the next great chapter in American history by reinvigorating our economy and enriching our communities.“

Though getting through the Judiciary Committee marks a historic victory for supporters of immigration reform, The accolades and celebrations following Tuesday’s vote could prove premature. That the bill nearly died in the Democratic-controlled Senate is an indication of the extreme jeopardy any immigration-related legislation is in upon arrival in the House, a chamber now dominated by hardcore conservative Republicans.

Tea Party favorites had already tried to scuttle debate on immigration in the committee stage, with GOP Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul leading the opposition to any measure that included citizenship for undocumented individuals or other government benefits for immigrants that entered the country “illegally.” This position was in stark contrast to other Republicans like Orrin Hatch and Lindsey Graham who actively worked with their Democratic foes in crafting the “Gang of Eight” package.

Conservatives are prepared to make a last stand in the House, threatening to kill any immigration deal and widen the rift that has developed between the GOP”s conservative base and its more moderate establishment. One leading Tea Party supporter in the House spoke for many of his colleagues when he declared that there is “no bill that I can support.”

With the Senate landmark immigration bill set to go to the full chamber floor for a vote, attention is now shifting to expected heated debate over the version in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Senate leaders received praise for coming to a bipartisan consensus on key issues Tuesday night — although one involved the very controversial decision to withdraw an amendment including same-sex couples — thus paving the way for a panel to approve the measure 13-5.

But the immigration plan, which is backed by President Obama and many establishment Republicans, appears headed for a showdown with wary House conservatives.

…….

It’s unclear whether the Republican-run House will embrace the Senate proposal, which would create a pathway to citizenship for many who entered the country illegally. Chances are slim.

“There’s no bill I’ve seen that I can support,” Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Texas, said in an interview Tuesday. When his constituents hear explanations of the proposed pathway to citizenship, he said, “they omit that paragraph and pencil in ‘amnesty.’”

Such uncertainty in the House and the necessity of winning a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate has forced immigration proponents to make a number of concessions to those conservatives willing to work on the issue.

Putting together this shaky coalition of Republicans needed to pass a broader bill has had one extremely important consequence for a large group of immigrants, as well as more obtuse ramifications for millions of other Americans . The final language of the Senate package specifically excluded any official recognition of same-sex marriages for immigration purposes, a nod to the right that has left gay activists livid at being abandoned to improve the prospects of a bill that very likely will die in the House regardless.

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy had offered an amendment to the larger immigration package that would have created legal recognition of the immigration rights of gay couples and same-sex marriages.Such a mandate would directly impact the nearly 30,000 LGBT couples currently unable to unite in the United States under existing immigration procedures.

Although the existing ban on recognizing immigrant gay marriages or civil unions could soon be struck down by the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision on the federal Defense of Marriage Act, gay rights groups had sought to circumvent the uncertainty of waiting for a legal ruling by enshrining equal rights and protections in any congressional immigration legislation.

Leahy was forced to pull his provision on gay couples with a “heavy heart” after public opposition from key Republicans caused Democrats in the Senate to express their unwillingness to vote for it if it meant the entire bill could be stalled. Flipping on a path to citizenship for the undocumented is part of the GOP’s effort to rebrand the party as more tolerant and inclusive, but that policy shift still does not extend to LGBT immigrants or citizens.

Conservative lawmakers claimed acknowledging gay rights in the immigration law would be a “bridge too far” for them after risking Tea Party backlash for backing the broader measure.

Sen. Patrick Leahy withdrew his proposed amendment to the comprehensive immigration reform bill that would have recognized the marriages of same-sex couples for immigration purposes on Tuesday night, after several Democratic members of the committee stated that they would not be supporting it.

A little past 7 p.m., Leahy said, “It is with a heavy heart … I will withhold the Leahy Amendment 7 at this point.”

Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, offered the amendment a half-hour earlier, saying, “I don’t want to be the senator who asks Americans to choose between the love of their life and the love of their country.”

He added, “Discriminating against people based on who they love is a travesty,” noting that he wanted to hear from members of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” senators about why they didn’t include protections for gay couples in the initial bill.

Sen. Lindsey Graham went first, saying he opposed the inclusion of gay couples’ protections in the bill, despite noting his respect for Leahy’s “passion” is support of marriage equality.

“If you redefine marriage for immigration purposes [by the amendment], the bill would fall apart because the coalition would fall apart,” Graham said. “It would be a bridge too far.”

Democrats immediately sought to comfort the gay community by promising to resurrect the provision at a later date, possibly as a standalone measure. But such a bill would be unlikely to win GOP support in the Senate on its own, and would face certain defeat in the House.

Republican lawmakers supportive of immigration reform had warned their Democratic colleagues that any push to include gay rights in immigration legislation would drive off conservative votes for the bill. And religious groups lobbying for an immigration bill had likewise issued threats that they would attack any package that featured protections for gays despite breaking with their ideological allies and advocating for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

“Immigration is hard enough. Let’s not go down the road of redefining marriage,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters last month, adding that the language “is not going to be in the bill.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-S.C.) echoed that point to Politico. “It will virtually guarantee that it won’t pass,” he said. “This issue is a difficult enough issue as it is. I respect everyone’s views on it. But ultimately, if that issue is injected into this bill, the bill will fail and the coalition that helped put it together will fall apart.”

And as Politico’s Carrie Budoff-Brown points out, the provision might also provoke a host of evangelical and Catholic leaders who have endorsed the “Gang of Eight” effort. Support from religious groups has been viewed by advocates as crucial to winning the backing of GOP lawmakers and approval from conservative voters.

Reaction from the LGBT community has been swift. Activists have voiced outrage at the premise put forward by Democrats that protections for gay couples was not important enough to risk  scuttling the entire immigration bil, and that Republicans were using the gay couple issue to hold the entire package hostage.

Gay rights groups charged that Democrats “don’t have the courage or the spine” to take on conservatives that remain opposed to any federal recognition of same-sex marriage or civil unions.

Several key gay rights groups did not accept that rationale, arguing that the issue was a matter of principle and fairness for the estimated 30,000 binational same-sex couples who remain unable to unite in the country. They are currently barred from receiving a spousal visa under the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

“Today it became clear that our so-called ‘friends’ don’t have the courage or the spine to stand up for what’s right,” said Felipe Sousa-Rodriguez, co-director of the advocacy group GetEqual. He added that Democratic lawmakers “are content to buy into the false choice that Republicans created — holding a sorely needed immigration bill hostage in order to cement inequality into law.”

……

Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin denounced the four Republicans in the bipartisan immigration group — Graham and Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Jeff Flake (Ariz.).

“It is deplorable that a small number of senators have been able to stand in the way of progress for lesbian and gay couples torn apart by discriminatory laws,” Griffin said. “We are extremely disappointed that our allies did not put their anti-LGBT colleagues on the spot and force a vote.”

 

Senate Republicans To Block Tornado Disaster Relief?

 Austerity, Congress, Economy, Environment, Extreme Weather, Natural Disasters, Republicans, Spending Cuts  No Responses »
May 212013
 

Victims of Monday’s deadly tornado that ripped through an Oklahoma City suburb may face delays in receiving relief aid and assistance from the federal government. At least one Senate Republican is vowing to enforce a demand that any disaster aid funds be offset with substantial spending cuts from another sector of the federal government.

The lawmaker speaking out about the need for austerity at a time of disaster is none other than Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn. His constituents faced a terrifying ordeal on Monday when a massive twister leveled much of Moore, Oklahoma, including schools, businesses and many neighborhoods. At least 51 people are confirmed dead, including many children.

But Coburn quickly put out a statement that promised to line up spending cutds before any taxpayer funds were appropriated for tornado cleanup. As much as $200 million was needed following the deadly Joplin tornado in 2011, and Coburn confirmed that he would “absolutely” seek funding offsets if a similar figure was called for following the Oklahoma disaster.

The tornado damage near Oklahoma City is still being assessed and the death toll is expected to rise, but already Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., says he will insist that any federal disaster aid be paid for with cuts elsewhere.

CQ Roll Call reporter Jennifer Scholtes wrote for CQ.com Monday evening that Coburn said he would “absolutely” demand offsets for any federal aid that Congress provides.

Coburn added, Scholtes wrote, that it is too early to guess at a damage toll but that he knows for certain he will fight to make sure disaster funding that the federal government contributes is paid for. It’s a position he has taken repeatedly during his career when Congress debates emergency funding for disaster aid.

Both Oklahoma US senators — Coburn and fellow Republican James Inhofe — have a controversial history concerning federal disaster relief. They have argued against money for FEMA and  joined with other Republicans in Congress to successfully stall federal aid for victims of Hurricane Sandy last year, sparking outrage from the regions affected by that storm and even fellow Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

But both Sooner State lawmakers have also called for immediate federal money when natural disasters have scarred their own home state. A Coburn staffer claims things will be different in the aftermath of the Moore twister.

Sens. Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn, both Republicans, are fiscal hawks who have repeatedly voted against funding disaster aid for other parts of the country. They also have opposed increased funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which administers federal disaster relief. 

Late last year, Inhofe and Coburn both backed a plan to slash disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy. In a December press release, Coburn complained that the Sandy Relief bill contained “wasteful spending,” and identified a series of items he objected to, including “$12.9 billion for future disaster mitigation activities and studies.”

Coburn spokesman John Hart on Monday evening confirmed that the senator will seek to ensure that any additional funding for tornado disaster relief in Oklahoma be offset by cuts to federal spending elsewhere in the budget. “That’s always been his position [to offset disaster aid],” Hart said. “He supported offsets to the bill funding the OKC bombing recovery effort.” Those offsets were achieved in 1995 by tapping federal funds that had not yet been appropriated.

In 2011, both senators opposed legislation that would have granted necessary funding for FEMA when the agency was set to run out of money. Sending the funds to FEMA would have been “unconscionable,” Coburn said at the time.

……..

And despite their voting record on disaster aid for other states, both Coburn and Inhofe appear to sing a different tune when it comes to such funding for Oklahoma.

In January of 2007, Coburn urged federal officials to speed disaster relief aid after the state faced a major ice storm.

A year later, in 2008, Inhofe lauded the fact that emergency relief from the Department of Housing and Urban Development would be given to 24 Oklahoma counties. “The impact of severe weather has been truly devastating to many Oklahoma communities across the state. I am pleased that the people whose lives have been affected by disastrous weather are getting much-needed federal assistance,” he said at the time.

Inhofe has on Tuesday distanced himself somewhat from both his colleague Tom Coburn’s stand on offsetting disaster spending and his own recent history in voting against federal aid for other parts of the country.

Confronted with his current request for federal assistance for Monday’s deadly Oklahoma storm juxtaposed with his vocal opposition to aid money for Sandy victims, Inhofe said that the two situations are “totally different” and that the Sandy bill included “pork” spending.

In the wake of the devastating tornado in an Oklahoma City suburb, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) rejected comparisons between federal aid for this disaster and the Hurricane Sandy relief package he voted against.

That was a “totally different” situation, Inhofe told MSNBC, arguing that the Sandy aid was filled with pork. There were “things in the Virgin Islands. They were fixing roads there and putting roofs on houses in Washington, D.C.”

“Everyone was getting in and exploiting the tragedy that took place,” he said. “That won’t happen in Oklahoma.”