On Tuesday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “Dan Abrams Live,” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) said that there have been conditions on disaster aid before and that while the focus with California needs to be helping people, placing conditions to ensure lessons are learned for next time is something that should be explored.
Cuellar stated, “[I]f we are going to put ‘conditions’ to make it better the next time so we can be stronger for the next disaster, I can understand that. But just to punish people just because one’s a blue state or one happen[s] to be a red state in the future, I don’t think we need to go that way. But do we put conditions to make it stronger so the lesson’s learned for the next time? Absolutely, we ought to look at that. But…we ought to focus on the people that need the help and if we need to put some conditions to make it stronger the next time, then, definitely, I can support that, but not to just punish somebody because a state or a city happened to be blue.”
Earlier, Cuellar stated, “What we need to do is focus first on helping those families, somebody who lost their home, somebody who can’t go back to their houses anymore, the children, the families, the mothers, the fathers. That’s what we need to focus [on]. We can talk about politics at a later time. But, first, focus on the people that need the help. We’ve done this over the years and we can do it again this year.”
Host Dan Abrams then said, “[F]or example, your congressional district in southwest Texas was decimated by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, historic flooding, caused 190 billion dollars in damages, 200,000 people left without electricity, over 100 people killed. There was plenty of blame to go around. Houston had an insufficient number of emergency shelters open and ready, many without power for weeks. The Obama administration there imposed rules that required federally supported rebuilding efforts take into account the effects of climate change. The Trump administration revoked those rules. But it seems conditions are nothing new.”
Cuellar responded, “Yeah, and I’m not saying that conditions are now going to be opposed. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. We’ve done that. We want to make sure that we learn the lessons and that we learn from those lessons as we move forward. But again, my focus has always been help the folks that need the help, and if we’re going to add certain ‘conditions,’ make sure it’s to make it better the next time so we can be stronger the next time there is a hurricane or a fire or a disaster or earthquake, whatever the situation might be, either God-made or manmade also.”
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