GOP Rep. McClintock: ‘Not So Sure’ Conditioning CA Fire Aid Creates Precedent Dems Can Use to Coerce Other States

On Monday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “On Balance,” Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) responded to a question on if conditioning disaster aid to California would create a dangerous precedent that would allow Democrats to use disaster relief as leverage to coerce other states to enact Democrats’ preferred policies by saying, “Well, I’m not so sure. There’s an old saying that you can’t fill a broken bucket by pouring more water in it. At some point, you’ve got to fix the bucket.”

Host Leland Vittert asked, “You’ve made a compelling argument for why the policies in California need to change. But if you start conditioning disaster aid as Republicans, do you not worry that when Democrats are in control and there’s a hurricane in Florida, suddenly, in order to get disaster aid for a hurricane in Florida, Florida needs to change its laws on building near the beach or on endangered species? This is a dangerous road to go down, isn’t it?

McClintock responded, “Well, I’m not so sure. There’s an old saying that you can’t fill a broken bucket by pouring more water in it. At some point, you’ve got to fix the bucket. And this is not the first time in recent years that we’ve seen this catastrophe. You remember, in 2018, the Camp Fire destroyed the entire town of Paradise. 18,000 structures burned, 87 people killed, but nobody famous lives in Paradise. So, nobody paid much attention to it. This sort of thing is the direct result of bad public policy and those policies have got to be changed or we’re going to repeat this tragedy over and over again every few years.”

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Authored by Ian Hanchett via Breitbart January 13th 2025