House OK's $50.7 Billion In Sandy Emergency Funding - kcentv.com - KCEN HD - Waco, Temple, and Killeen

(NBC NEWS) -- The U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday night approved an additional $33.7 billion in funding for emergency spending on recovery efforts aimed at helping those impacted by Hurricane Sandy.  The final vote came after the House had passed another $17 billion in spending earlier in the day.

In all, the House approved spending of $50.7 billion Tuesday, but not after political debates over spending that does not directly go to the areas impacted by the super storm. 

The House GOP leadership carefully orchestrated a multi-stage process designed to permit Republican members to vote for some Sandy aid, but not the full $60.4 billion the Senate OK'd last year, if they object to that much spending. And by designing the process in this way the GOP leadership made it highly likely that the total package will ultimately become law after the Senate acts next week.

On the $33.7 billion segment of the bill, a group of northern Republicans joined with Democrats to push the measure to passage, on a vote of 228 to 192.

Finally, in something of an anticlimax, the House approved the entire $50.7 billion measure on a vote of 241 to 180.  In that vote, 49 Republicans joined 192 Democrats to approve it, while 1 Democrat and 179 Republicans voted to oppose.

Fiscal conservatives, who objected to spending not directly related to Sandy, were able to trim only relatively small amounts of money from the bill, for example $9.8 million for a wildlife refuge in Connecticut and $150 million for Regional Ocean Partnership grants.

The GOP leadership's cautious handling of the emergency funding came after an embarrassing fracas on New Year's Eve when House Speaker John Boehner wouldn't permit a vote on a $60.4 billion aid bill, sparking harsh criticism from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and House members from the Northeast.

At issue Tuesday were two measures, the smaller one costing $17 billion, offered by House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., and the larger one costing $33.7 billion, offered by Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., a senior member of the Appropriations Committee.

Some House Republicans remain alarmed at the large outlays and the additional debt that they will necessitate. 

Mulvaney said on the House floor, "I want this money to go where it needs to go" and said he did not intend to delay the funding. But due to the growing national debt and reliance on foreign lenders, "We are no longer capable of taking care of our own."

He defended his call for offsetting spending cuts, saying to his colleagues: "Just tell me what you're willing to do without" in order to pay for helping victims of Hurricane Sandy.

But Rogers denounced Mulvaney's proposal as one requiring "devastating, slash-and-burn cuts."

The conservative advocacy group, the Club for Growth, said it would put all three votes, on the two bills and on the Mulvaney amendment, on its vote-rating scorecard to hold members accountable in the 2014 elections.

Earlier Tuesday Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., defended the bipartisan effort by Colorado members to add to the emergency bill $125 million for watershed protection and flood mitigation, including about $20 million for areas in Colorado burned by last summer's wildfires.

The watershed protection money was in the Sandy bill that the Senate passed last month. The House Rules Committee rebuffed Gardner's effort Monday night, but he said hoped Colorado's two senators will make efforts to add the money when the Senate debates the emergency bill next week.

"The title of the bill is ‘The Disaster Relief Appropriations Act.' That's the name of the bill. It's not the ‘Sandy Disaster Act.' It's not the ‘Sandy Relief Act.' It's a disaster relief act. New Yorkers weren't the only ones who had their homes burned down in a devastating natural disaster. We had over 600 in Colorado alone," Gardner said.

"If we're going to have disaster assistance for people in this country who truly need it – because we are all in this together -- then we shouldn't just cherry-pick Northeastern United States versus Southwestern United States," he added.

None of the short-term tactical maneuvering on Tuesday addressed a serious and growing problem:  the increasing frequency of catastrophic weather events is making it more difficult to prepare the federal budget and to do long-term fiscal planning. If catastrophes require adding $60 billion a year in new spending, it is in effect creating another large Cabinet department every year, without the money to do so.