House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday urged Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to bring Members back to Washington this week for a special session to appropriate relief to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.<\/p>\n
Pelosi asked Hastert to call Members back with just two business days remaining in the August recess. (Lawmakers are scheduled to return Tuesday after the Labor Day holiday.)<\/p>\n
“Given the scope of this disaster, I believe that Congress should return to Washington immediately, and pass a bill this week to provide the assistance needed to restore the lives of families and communities devastated by the deadly hurricane,” Pelosi said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Hastert’s office is apparently cool to the idea, saying that FEMA has things covered and Congress can react to the White House’s emergency supplemental appropriation once it’s ready.<\/p>\n
But given the scope of this disaster, wouldn’t it be encouraging to see Congress doing something<\/i>? Lawmakers have had a month-long recess and they know that they’re going to have to craft a relief and support package upon their return. Why not get to work now instead of waiting until next Tuesday?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It took some prodding, but the president gave up the last two days of his five-week vacation in light of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, however, the halls of Congress are empty. Nancy Pelosi thinks it’s time for lawmakers to get back to work. She has a point. House Minority […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5132","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}