Daily News - Peter King: NY Reps Forced To Act Like '3rd World Beggars' To Get Superstorm Sandy Relief

News Article

By Ken Lovett

Rep. Peter King said many of his fellow House Republicans made New York representatives feel like "third world beggars" in pushing for the $60.4 billion post Superstorm Sandy relief package.

King, filling in for John Gambling on WOR-AM, said during an interview Gov. Cuomo that he found it "disgraceful" that many of his fellow Republican House members who were trying to block the post Sandy relief package for New York and New Jersey came form states that got emergency funds in the past.

He cited a New Jersey congressman who said on the floor that Congress now needs a "hypocrites conference" for those whose states received funding the past and now sought to deny the New York region what it was seeking.

"Quite frankly it's going to be difficult going back and working with people you sit next to and whenever they were in need,, we responded immediately," he said."Not one member of Congress ever voted against or said one word in opposition to aid going to other states when the money was needed."

"We were going around like third world beggars. At least they put us in that position."

King praised Cuomo for his bipartisan effort and for holding in his anger when D.C. was playing politics.

In return, Cuomo called King instrumental in getting the House GOP majority to ultimately act.

Cuomo praised New York's elected officials for putting politics aside in times of emergency.

"We skirted and we circumvented and we defeated the normal politics, divisions and pettiness and turf that is all too often in this business--and frankly you see all too often in Washington these days where everybody is trying to make a political point rather than actually get something done. And everyone is responding to their extreme rather than what's good for the people of there district and the country."

"In New York, we got around that," he said. "Maybe it's because the disaster was so terrible that it just shook the politics out of the situation. Or, I like to think that's how we're governing in New York."

Cuomo said he was aghast that Washington sought to renege on its promise.

"We shook hands and they were going to renege on their promise to New York after a disaster? I had never seen that before," he said.

Disasters are the one time the country unifies, he said.

"This was the first time they were trying to inject politics and gridlock into repair and mediation after a disaster," he said.

Cuomo added the state did not have a Plan B had it not got the $30 billion in federal relief for storm recovery.

King also praised Cuomo for his passed of a gun control law this week that included an expansion of the state's assault weapons ban.

Source