After the outrage we saw from members on both sides of the aisle the evening House Speaker John Boehner cancelled the vote on hurricane Sandy relief and the subsequent displays by Gov. Chris Christie and Rep. Peter King, among others, leave it to
January 3, 2013

After the outrage we saw from members on both sides of the aisle the evening House Speaker John Boehner cancelled the vote on hurricane Sandy relief and the subsequent displays by Gov. Chris Christie and Rep. Peter King, among others, leave it to Bill Kristol who has never seen a dime of military spending he didn't love, to come to the defense of John Boehner.

Sadly, as Media Matters noted, he wasn't alone. And his fellow guest on Bret Baier's Special Report, Charles Krauthammer was right there with him as well. The excuse given by Kristol and Krauthammer here was primarily based on concerns that the bill was larded up with some pork that the House didn't have sufficient time to look at, even though the Senate had passed their bill a week before they were asking for this vote to be taken in the House. If that was a real concern, apparently it doesn't matter much now, since Boehner caved to the political pressure and is going to have the House vote "to shore up the National Flood Insurance Program on Friday and will vote on another $51 billion Sandy spending package on Jan. 15."

Whatever the excuses, it seems they were more than happy to give cover to Boehner and the House Republicans for being incapable of being responsible and caring about doing the job of actually governing this country, rather than continued political brinksmanship we've seen from the House and John Boehner and his cohorts taking their vacation time around the holidays, instead of tending to the needs of those suffering in the aftermath of that storm.

Here's more from the Media Matters post on Kristol:

Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol: "I Think The Speaker Was Entirely Right To Pull The Bill." During an appearance on Fox News' Special Report, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol said, "I think the Speaker was entirely right to pull the bill." He added: "$60 billion is about one-tenth of this year's federal domestic discretionary nondefense spending. This is not like, gee, a couple hundred million dollars for some really important, urgent thing." [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 1/2/13]

Kristol never seems to have those same concerns about our military industrial complex. That's the only jobs program that Republicans seem to support and I've never heard Kristol express any concern over what the waste there is contributing to our budget deficit. Unlimited funds for the Pentagon. Hurricane victims, well you can wait. And don't dare include any pork in that spending because lord knows we can't have that as long as it's going for people who just had their homes destroyed in a storm and to help their state's infrastructure recover.

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