House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Wednesday that he intends to look for offsets if federal aid is needed to help areas of his Virginia district that were damaged in an earthquake Tuesday.Of course, the hard-line Republican position is "Tough, sucker! You don't want earthquake damage, you shouldn't have lived there!" but at least he's not just cold demanding Fedbux and conveniently forgetting the way he treated storm victims a month or two ago.
“There is an appropriate federal role in incidents like this,” the Republican said after touring the damage in his district. “Obviously, the problem is that people in Virginia don’t have earthquake insurance.”
The next step will be for Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) to decide whether to make an appeal for federal aid, Cantor said. The House Majority Leader would support such an effort but would look to offset the cost elsewhere in the federal budget.
“All of us know that the federal government is busy spending money it doesn’t have,” Cantor said in Culpeper, where the quake damaged some buildings along a busy shopping thoroughfare.
Of course, I'm not in a position to vote for him. And at the moment I don't know if he's going to greedily snatch up money for my highway retrofit to repair Virginia's privately-owned buildings. But for now, good on ya Eric Cantor!
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