{"id":2421,"date":"2004-08-27T11:15:57","date_gmt":"2004-08-27T16:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2421.html"},"modified":"2004-08-27T11:15:57","modified_gmt":"2004-08-27T16:15:57","slug":"hasterts-slap-at-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/hasterts-slap-at-new-york\/","title":{"rendered":"Hastert’s slap at New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

His timing couldn’t be worse. Just as the Republican National Convention is about to kick off in New York City — which isn’t exactly a GOP stronghold to begin with — House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has managed to seriously offend his party’s host city.<\/p>\n

The controversy kicked off on Wednesday when the conservative New York Post reported<\/a> that Hastert’s new book condemns the way in which city officials requested federal funds after the 9\/11 attacks, requests Hastert labeled “unseemly.”<\/p>\n

Hastert, in his book and in an interview yesterday with The Post, says the price tag for rebuilding became the driving issue for lawmakers and New Yorkers — who were so fixated on dollar signs that they lost sight of the human side of the tragedy. <\/p>\n

“All the tragedy was converted into dollars and cents,” Hastert told The Post. “People kind of lost the sense of the depth of the tragedy itself.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This didn’t go over well.<\/p>\n

“The only thing unseemly is the three years it has taken us trying to get the president and Congress to fulfill their promise,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.). <\/p>\n

“What’s unseemly is that the $20 billion became the ceiling, not the floor, in help to New York, when so many needs remains,” she added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hastert’s book also acknowledged that conservative Republicans are “openly hostile to New York and its interests,” which made the post-9\/11 aid package “not an easy sell.”<\/p>\n

Yesterday, anger towards Hastert got considerably worse<\/a>.
\n<\/p>\n

New Yorkers yesterday slammed House Speaker Dennis Hastert for claiming the Big Apple was guilty of an “unseemly scramble” for cash after Sept. 11 — and one city councilman demanded he return his FDNY cap. <\/p>\n

“I want to let Hastert know we want our FDNY cap back,” fumed Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., referring to the baseball cap given to Hastert three years ago when the powerful Illinois lawmaker toured Ground Zero shortly after the 9\/11 attacks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A few New York officials also noticed that Hastert has a selective way of complaining about federal spending.<\/p>\n

Rep. Jose Serrano (D-Bronx) labeled Hastert’s remarks “really sad.”<\/p>\n

“Hastert is not complaining about the cost of rebuilding Iraq, yet he complains about rebuilding New York?” Serrano said.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Queens) pointed out that Florida residents ask for money after the state gets hit by hurricanes. <\/p>\n

“I guess it’s unseemly to ask for help only if you are a New Yorker.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What a great way to kick-off the convention, Mr. Speaker. Maybe now you can take a few shots at the Yankees and the Mets for good measure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

His timing couldn’t be worse. Just as the Republican National Convention is about to kick off in New York City — which isn’t exactly a GOP stronghold to begin with — House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has managed to seriously offend his party’s host city. The controversy kicked off on Wednesday when the conservative New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}