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Remember When Mitt Romney Called Disaster Relief Immoral and Wanted to Privatize It?
As Sandy bears down with a potentially life-threatening storm, we flash back to the 2011 primaries when Mitt Romney called the debt resulting from disaster relief ‘immoral’ and wanted to privatize it. Asked about federal spending on disaster relief in the context of the tornadoes and flooding hitting many states at the time, Romney claimed we can’t keep spending money on disaster relief and putting our children in debt.
Watch here from Think Progress in June of 2011:
Transcript from Think Progress:
ROMNEY: Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better. [...] We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all.
Mitt Romney also said the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be privatized — you know, so it would be for profit, which has proven to be a disastrous idea in and of itself. See, corporations whose only responsibility is to make a profit tend to not want to pay up when disaster strikes. It’s expensive to pay up, so they try to find ways to duck and dodge doing so.
If Romney had his way, those same folks who ignored Katrina victims would be in charge of preparing for disaster.
Winning.
Romney justifies this by blaming the deficit that George W Bush drove up with policies that Mitt Romney wants to continue. Romney wants to give the wealthy more tax cuts than Bush did but he can’t pay for them — just like Bush. And then there were Bush’s two unfunded wars and Medicare Part D. That kind of deficit is okay with Republicans. But what is not okay is when we spend federal money to save American lives.
House Republicans have left life-saving disaster relief tied up over their extremism as well, prompting Republican Senator Marco Rubio to condemn the House Republicans, “Rubio said disaster relief projects should be funded and not ‘held hostage over political wrangling.’ Funding disaster relief, he said, is a ‘legitimate and proper’ role of the federal government.”
According to Mitt Romney, funding for disaster relief is not a proper role for the federal government he seeks to lead. What he doesn’t tell you is that when they privatize, the company still gets paid from tax payer money. It ends up costing more money but offering less accountability to the people. Who does it benefit? The folks who own for profit disaster relief companies, like Republican Jeb Bush.
Oh, wait, that was primary Mitt. Primary Mitt is gone now, having succumbed to a visceral hatred of his “values”. Today’s Mitt will no doubt deny having ever said this. Please proceed to erase what you just saw from your mind. Etch-a-sketch will be pro-life for disaster victims and outraged at you for daring to bring up when he wasn’t in 5…4…3…2…
Somehow the notion that we might not have so many children to put in debt if we didn’t spend money on disaster relief failed to trickle down.
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24 Responses to Remember When Mitt Romney Called Disaster Relief Immoral and Wanted to Privatize It?
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Reynardine
Oct. 28th, 2012 at 4:43 pm
Oh, shit, there you have it. You can’t limit the population growth with birth control, because then women might enjoy sex, and that is immoral, so you do it by withholding disaster relief.
Gary Leventhal
Oct. 29th, 2012 at 2:22 am
Thumbs up.
Maxine LaCombe
Oct. 29th, 2012 at 3:51 am
Romney isn’t stupid he’s just heartless. He has an Ebeneezer Scrooge mentality…He’d like to ‘decrease the surplus population of the world.” He knows full well that the poor, handicapped, disabled & elderly ( You know who I mean…The 47 percent) would be destroyed if disaster relief were privatized. You can be certain He would find a way to line his pockets at the 47% expense. There are 2 kinds of Republicans The Manipulated and the Manipulators Romney is a Manipulator. He flip-flops back and forth saying whatever he thinks each particular audience wants to hear, contradicting himself at every turn and then when confronted with the very words He’s uttered He gets loud and belligerent denying, denying, denying! I wonder if He’s honestly been held accountable for anything in his entire life?
Benny Belloes
Oct. 28th, 2012 at 4:47 pm
I wounder how the man of flip flopping/liar will come out on the damage that will be done by the storm now headed toward the east coast?
VeggieTart
Oct. 29th, 2012 at 9:52 am
He doesn’t care. He can afford to fix whatever is damaged to his property.
And such a Christian value–refusing to care for those in need. /sarcasm
Shiva (Moderator)
Oct. 28th, 2012 at 4:53 pm
Thats a great ad waiting to happen.
Mitt the out of touch with America Romney.
If Romney was pres he would be out buying up construction company’s right now
Reynardine
Oct. 28th, 2012 at 5:06 pm
I don’t doubt he’s already doing it.
luciboo
Oct. 28th, 2012 at 5:30 pm
PA Gov Corbett the Terrible just had the nerve to go on tv and stated he had requested federal disaster aid.
These people in the GOP are so too faced they can speak out of their mouths and rear ends at the same time. The nerve to ask for help when they want to abolish the program.
mjh
Oct. 28th, 2012 at 7:33 pm
Remember when Rick “Helmethair” Perry requested federal aid for the Texas wildfires?
That’s right — Helmethair requested aid from the US federal gov’t . . . the same federal gov’t he earlier expressed a desire to secede from . . .
.
shawn
Oct. 28th, 2012 at 6:20 pm
With so many different Romneys, I can’t keep them all straight and more. Was this RNC romney or primary Romney? I know it wasn’t one of the debate romneys because they all ranged from moderate to liberal this sounds like one of the neo-con Romneys.
Deanne
Oct. 28th, 2012 at 6:40 pm
Reminds me of the short sawed off stunned little runt Jindal, in 2009 being the choice of the Rethugs to respond to President Obama’s State of the Union speech — this when the Rethugs thought Jindal was the best thing since sliced bread to put up against Obama and were pushing him to the front of the line to lead the party. You can easily connect the dots why. Nothing racial!!
Well – Jindal did a speech dump. He was a disaster. The one thing I still remember from the speech was his reference to ‘wasteful spending’ inclusive of ‘something called volcano monitoring’.
“While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a “magnetic levitation” line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called “volcano monitoring.” Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.”
One week later, a volcano in Alaska erupted in a location where there are oil storage tanks at the foot of the volcano. But in Jindal’s pee brain — not important. Egg on the little dick’s face as reporting about the eruption, the dots were connected to Jindal’s speech. I have no use for the sawed off little co…..ker — just like Romney et al.
mjh
Oct. 28th, 2012 at 7:21 pm
Piyush Jindal is nonwhite and doesn’t have an ‘merkan sounding name — so it’s not like he was ever gonna get the GOP nomination, anyway.
Like Michael Steele, he was somebody the GOP trotted out in the wake of President Obama’s election to show their “commitment to diversity,” and, true to Repub form, was put away once his usefulness evaporated.
.
Reynardine
Oct. 28th, 2012 at 8:23 pm
Yeah, the way they saw it, it was just a dark meat contest.
j
Oct. 28th, 2012 at 6:40 pm
I’m just speechless, Romney was at a rally, today I think and he was telling them (in Ohio) that he was the auto industry candidate and that Obama wanted to ship their jobs to China, HAS ANYONE ELSE NOTICED THAT HE BEGINS TO HAVE A DEMENTED LOOK?
I’m honestly wondering if he has a mental illness, is there anyone that could believe him?
mjh
Oct. 28th, 2012 at 7:24 pm
I’m honestly wondering if he has a mental illness, is there anyone that could believe him?
His wife has hinted as much — on more than one occasion . . .
.
The Platzner Post
Oct. 28th, 2012 at 7:23 pm
Save us from the Willard!!!
Sharing on The Platzner Post Facebook, and Twitter
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mjh
Oct. 28th, 2012 at 7:29 pm
Remember When Mitt Romney Called Disaster Relief Immoral and Wanted to Privatize It?
Remember when Todd Akin called rape legitimate, and Richard Mourdock said any conception as a result was a gift?
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present: your modern GOP.
.
fedup
Oct. 28th, 2012 at 7:59 pm
I have a suggestion put a new bed of dirt in MITTENS coffin and lay him down for another century his thoughts never came out of the 1800s this has to be done before the storm, becuase he will try to screw up relief efforts by telling FOX what he would do which will be a flip-flop from this article. HE WILL GRANDSTAND AFTERWARDS
clarence swinney
Oct. 29th, 2012 at 7:25 am
ROMNEY DEBT
Will he replay Bush years?
Recall—Surplus–CBO showed how a continuance of 2000 fiscal policies ended 2010 with $10,000B surplus—Bush let us into fiscal disaster–$6100B add on to debt—surplus to $1400B Deficit—tax cuts dded $2000B—Wars added $2000B—Part D added $1000B–
Romney scares me with Bush type talk—Tax Cuts for rich plus military interventionism.
Judy
Oct. 29th, 2012 at 1:24 pm
Years ago I worked at MCAS Cherry Point, NC. They decided to “privatize” the cleaning crew to “save” money. Hundreds of workers lost their jobs along with their retirements that had done top notch work. The bathrooms became so nasty that we avoided them. Trash bins were always overflowing. You never recognized the workers as the turnover was so great (paid min. wage/no benefits). Also, things began to disappear from people’s desks, etc. NEVER, ever ANY problem before! Come to find out, NO MONEY was saved, actually paid more for less work, it just all went to whomever owned the company, NOT the workers! Also, the workers who LOST their jobs went on the public assistance programs along with all the paid workers of the company. GREED. God help us all if FEMA is contracted out. These are the FACTS people!
clarence swinney
Oct. 29th, 2012 at 4:51 pm
OBAMA FAILED LAW ENFORCEMENT
There have been many convictions on Housing Fraud but penalties are fines and petty cash types.
Federal regulators pursued Small fry not Senior Mangers who did so much long term damage to this nation. Could it be pal to pal campaign donations.
In the 1980′s S&L crimes 3700 got prison time.
The current Residential Mortgage Backed Securities Task Force needs help.
The Student Loan Industry has been loaded with servicers misapplying payments, giving borrowers bad advice and reporting incorrect information to credit bureaus.
We need action. Big time action. We will never get it out of Wall Street Romney.
Deanne
Oct. 29th, 2012 at 7:23 pm
Your first line that Obama failed law enforcement. Really?? From what planet would you be from??
Add to that first line and last line — they contradict each other. You trashed Obama in line one and lack of trust of Romney in the last. So you’re voting for Mickey Mouse?? Your post is totally a muddled mess.
Add that the Student Loans under Obama no longer have a ‘third party’ involved in that he removed the banks out of the equasion. That also allowed him to keep the interest rates lower for student loans.
When you make reference to servicers in student loans, remember to think about all the ‘for profit schools’ — those that are overcharging but not delivering high quality education — those schools who hire the people at the schools who the students apply to and therefore responsible for said employees. The President doesn’t hire them. Remember to differentiate.
You appear to be posting some old talking points when you start comparing 1980′s S&L — Knock, Knock — it’s 2012 and it’s a totally different ballgame you’re attempting to discuss.
UncaJoe
Oct. 29th, 2012 at 8:15 pm
I believe clarence swinney was quoting Romney.
noshow
Oct. 30th, 2012 at 1:36 pm
Yet..the American people still voting for him…replay of dumb and dumber I reckon.