The liberals will use anything they can, even hurricane response to try and smear Romney before the election. I read a little about this yesterday where liberals are suggesting that Romney wants to get rid of FEMA because he says it’s ‘immoral’, but that’s not at all what he said according to Conn Carroll at the Examiner:
Hurricane Sandy hadn’t even made landfall yet when President Obama’s political allies began trying to use the tragedy for political gain.
The Huffington Post‘s Ryan Grim, formerly a marijuana legalization activist, wrote an article Sunday claiming that Mitt Romney wanted to “shutter” the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The New York Times followed suit later Monday writing an editorial claiming Romney once called FEMA “immoral.”
This is all pure partisan nonsense. Here is what Romney did say at the 2011 Republican debate in Manchester, New Hampshire:
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. … Instead of thinking in the federal budget, what we should cut — we should ask ourselves the opposite question. What should we keep? We should take all of what we’re doing at the federal level and say, what are the things we’re doing that we don’t have to do? … 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.
At no point did Romney ever say FEMA was “immoral” or that he wanted to abolish it. What he did say is that we should ask ourselves what FEMA should and shouldn’t be doing, and then only pay for what’s needed.
So for example, FEMA should operate the National Response Coordination Center. But FEMA should stop wasting money on ineffective grants to local fire departments. This is common-sense, good government decision making. But Obama and his allies want to score political points instead.
Romney responded to this smear yesterday pointing out his actual position on FEMA and states taking more of the lead in disaster recovery:
The Romney campaign stressed Monday that states should take the lead in responding to emergencies like hurricanes. But the campaign said Romney would not abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“Gov. Romney believes that states should be in charge of emergency management in responding to storms and other natural disasters in their jurisdictions,” Romney spokesman Ryan Williams said in a statement. “As the first responders, states are in the best position to aid affected individuals and communities, and to direct resources and assistance to where they are needed most. This includes help from the federal government and FEMA.”
A campaign official added that Romney would not abolish FEMA.