Republicans Threaten To Withhold Aide From California Fire Victims

Republican politicians in both the House and Senate are threatening to withhold disaster aide to the victims of the California fires unless they agree to “certain concessions.” This is absolutely reprehensible, and it isn’t something that would ever happen to red states during disasters, regardless of which Party controlled the government. But this is how things work when a Blue State needs help, as Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

As the fires continue to rage in California, Republicans in both the House and Senate have publicly come out to suggest that they may withhold aid from the victims of the fire. They may withhold aid from the state of California unless those gosh darn Democrats in charge of California don't agree to certain concessions and change the way they run their state. The first comment came this past Friday from Republican representative Warren Davidson who said, quote, if they want the money, then there should be consequences where they have to change their policies. I mean, we support the people that are plagued by disaster, but we have to put pressure on the California government to change course here. All these things that they're doing are making it far easier for fires to grow and spread and be huge.

Then you had Republican Senator John Barrasso who said, quote, when you see what's being shown on television, in addition to the tragedy on the ground, you are also seeing gross mismanagement in California by elected officials, and it's heartbreaking to hear the fire chief say that they've diverted all of this money away from the fire department to be used for social programs when they were already stretched too thin. So, yes, I expect there's going to be hearings, there's going to be requests of Congress there, there can't be a blank check on this. However, because people wanna make sure that as rebuilding occurs, as things go on in California, they have to be resilient so that these sort of things can't happen again. And the policies of the liberal administration out there, i, I, I believe, have made these fires worse. I expect that there will be strings attached to the money that is ultimately approved, and it has to do with being ready the next time, because this was a gross failure this time.

There is also a proposed plan by Republicans to tie disaster aid to California to a bill that would eliminate the debt ceiling, which is what Donald Trump wants. Now, they have said mismanaging the forests, which of course is a talking point, Trump throughout, during his first administration, but they haven't, um, specifically said what that means, nor have they proposed any solutions to this so-called mismanagement. What they're doing is attempting to punish a state with a democratic governor who of course could be running for president in, you know, just a few years. So they wanna make him look bad, right? That's what's going on here. Now, think back a couple months ago, right, right. When hurricane season was in its worst part, and red states got absolutely annihilated. I mean, entire cities wiped off the map from these hurricanes, extreme weather events, which is exactly what the California fires are extreme weather related events. Could

You imagine what would've happened if President Biden had gone out there and said, well, you know, we, we, we wanna help the victims, but these red states need to change the way they do business. They need to change their, their policies. If they want to get any disaster relief money, Republicans would've stormed capital armed with every gun you could find, if President Biden ever said something like that, it would be wall to wall coverage to this day on national news. If President Biden had ever suggested that maybe we'll withhold aid from red states, you know, if they can't get their act together, I mean, you know, the hurricanes come just like California knows fires are gonna happen. What are you doing to mitigate the hurricanes? Are you, are you enacting policies to combat climate change? Are you putting stricter regulations in place to make sure that the homes don't get washed away in the floodwaters that come with it? He didn't do that.