Eric Cantor Stepped In It-- And Can't Wipe It Off

What a shame Eric Cantor has a carefully gerrymandered district that excludes demographically weaves in and out of neighborhoods to carefully exclude likely Democrats or even independents. Virginia's 7th CD was designed to give Republicans-- particularly Eric Cantor-- a guarantee of at least a 60% margin of victory. Bush took 61% both times and even McCain managed to scrape by with 53% in 2008. Cantor won his first race (in 2000) with 67% and last year was the first time he ever went below 60%, beating Rick Waugh 59-34%, Cantor's worst showing ever, but one that most incumbents would exult over. Waugh beat him in Caroline County and in the sliver of Richmond that the district encompasses. Cantor won in the 11 other counties-- with 70% in Spotsylvania Co., 73% in Page Co. and 67% in giant Hanover Co. Safe? Forever? Prominent Richmond attorney Wayne Powell doesn't think so. He's running against Cantor next year.

If Cantor is vulnerable, it's not because of his startlingly reactionary role in national politics per se. It's because how that could impact his constituents. As Paul Krugman put it yesterday, "Remember, Cantor isn’t denying something called “the government” the right to do something it wants to do. He’s denying disaster relief to people hard hit by a hurricane. That is, he’s holding suffering Americans hostage to his goal of smaller government. And the whole point of his offsetting spending cuts thing-- his invention of a nonsense principle-- is to obscure the ruthlessness of the blackmail involved." And Cantor is getting nervous that people in his district are getting fed up with his game-playing.

He told the Richmond Times-Dispatch, that relief funds would not get bogged down in the sort of protracted budget fight that has dominated Congressional politics all year. His spokesman Brad Dayspring, in a statement to several reporters, echoed this. "People and families affected by these disasters will certainly get what they need from their federal government," he said. "The goal should be to find ways to pay for what is needed or to find offsets whenever possible, that is the responsible thing to do. Clearly when disasters and emergencies happen, people expect their government to treat them as national priorities and respond properly. People also expect their government to spend their dollars wisely, and to make efforts to prioritize and save when possible."

That will come as welcome news to victims and FEMA alike, if it turns out that they need Congress to pass emergency legislation in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene.

Mark Merritt, a former senior FEMA official in the Clinton administration said these kinds of budget impasses can be a big drag in a disaster management situation.

"It happened when we were there," Merritt told TPM in an interview Tuesday. "They've addressed offsets before, and unfortunately offsets were from [Housing and Urban Development] money--community development block grants--which are a good tool for recovering from disaster.... Is anybody vehemently opposed to offsets? No. But they need to make sure that if they do them that, one, it happens quickly and, two, it doesn't come from programs that help recovery."

It was starting to sound like when he old crony Denny Hastert declared after Katrina that New Orleans should just be bulldozed and left to rot, pleasant enough red-meat Republican rhetoric when someone is talking about a place filled with minorities, but not what white conservatives expect to hear about their own neighborhoods... from their own congressman!

This is frightening quite a few congressional Republicans who are worrying that people will notice and associate them with an increasingly toxic Eric Cantor. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, some of whose state is underwater, probably wanted to strangle Cantor but settled for the same kind of solid rebuke that Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell gave him instead.

Yesterday, the leading Republican in Cantor’s own state, Gov. Bob McDonnell, rebuked him and said disaster aid should not be held hostage for budget cuts. Now, Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) is joining this chorus of Republican dissent, saying that aid should be delivered first and that possible cuts should be decided on later. “Our people are suffering now, and they need support now,” said Christie:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie reacted angrily to a fight brewing in Washington over whether Hurricane Irene disaster aid may need to be offset by federal spending cuts. “Our people are suffering now, and they need support now. And they [Congress] can all go down there and get back to work and figure out budget cuts later,” the Republican governor told a crowd in the flood-ravaged North Jersey town of Lincoln Park.

Back in the district Democrat Wayne Powell hasn't let this go by unnoticed either. From his blog:

Eric Cantor is doing every thing he can to block disaster relief from reaching the American people in a timely fashion. Cantor has said time and time again that money paid to help Americans affected by disasters must be offset by cuts in other areas of the government. Cantor refuses to consider finding new sources of revenue or even eliminating abusive tax loopholes. Cantor has instructed his GOP loyalists in the Congress to seek cuts from agencies like FEMA, the EPA, and the FDA.

Is that a logical response? Cutting disaster response funding in the face of a wave of disasters makes no sense. Was Eric Cantor disappointed by the amount of misery caused by Hurricane Irene? What about cutting funding to prevent pollution or tainted food? Does Eric Cantor support increasing the amount of pollution and tainted food?

Eric Cantor is leading the charge to make America a third world country, where the wealthiest control all capital and governmental duties are outsourced to corporations for profit. His proposals to eliminate programs that keep Americans safe make no sense.

Bernie Sanders pointed me to an editorial in the Scranton Times-Tribune worth closing with:

British oppression has effaced the boundaries of the several colonies; the distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American."

So declared Patrick Henry in 1774. In doing so, he established the principle that, on certain issues, the clear national interest is more important than any other.

A latter-day Virginian, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, seems to lack that sense of nationhood. His stance that federal disaster relief for the states can come only with budget cuts of equal size not only is remarkably callous, it is, as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders put it, an affront to the very idea of being a nation.

That is not simply speculative rhetoric. As the Federal Emergency Management Agency responds to devastated communities in Vermont, other parts of New England and New York's North Country, it is suspending funds for major work in Joplin, Mo., and other parts of the lower Midwest that were crushed by a record number of tornadoes this spring.

The prospect of a political fight, akin to the needless and damaging political meltdown over raising the debt ceiling, is galling. The notion that the government of the United States of America can't afford to respond to national disasters is ludicrous and should be rejected by all Americans.

Even more preposterous is the notion that disaster relief, as an element of the national debt, must be funded by budget cuts alone. If President Obama were to suggest that disaster relief, as an element of the national debt, had to be funded through repeal of the Bush-era tax cuts alone, one could only imagine the reaction.

National disasters like tornadoes and Hurricane Irene are unavoidable. Man-made catastrophic governance, like that advocated by Mr. Cantor, is inexcusable.