Disasters and Honesty

For more than a year, Democrats have been telling everyone who would listen that the Trump administration did not care about Puerto Rico and the damage done by the hurricane in 2018.  The Dems took that position even though the federal government has already spent over ninety billion dollars on relief for the island.  To put that in context, that sum is more than was spent for hurricane relief in the other two areas hit by major storms in the same two-month period, namely Texas and Florida.  There were roughly five times more people in the affected areas in Texas and Florida than live on the island of Puerto Rico, so on a per capita basis, the spending for the island was almost ten times what got spent in those two states.  Now, to be fair, the damage on Puerto Rico was severe, but it was also severe in Texas and Florida.  The $30,000 per person spent by the federal government ought to have been sufficient to achieve recovery on the island.

Despite all the prior spending, Congress had a bill before it this week that would have increased the amount to be spent on Puerto Rico.  It was part of a bill to help with disaster relief across the country.  Senate Democrats killed the bill with a filibuster.  They said it did not spend enough.  That's right, the Dems chose to cut off disaster relief totally rather than to provide an increase which didn't meet their desired level.

Think about  that.  No doubt, every Democrat sent out a tweet or issued a press release telling the Puerto Ricans that he or she was fighting for them by filibustering the bill.  I wonder if the people of Puerto Rico accept this.  They're being told, "you get nothing more because we're fighting for you."  I don't think that people are that dumb to believe this nonsense.