Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) seemed to contradict his colleague Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) stance on Tuesday on federal assistance for victims of the Moore, Oklahoma tornado, suggesting that there will be help coming. But he also differentiated that need from his opposition to aid for victims of Hurricane Sandy.
“That was totally different,” he told MSNBC host Kris Jansing, saying that requests for help after the hurricane went instead to “things in the Virgin Islands. They were fixing roads there. They were putting roofs on houses in Washington, D.C. Everyone was getting in and exploiting the tragedy that took place. That won’t happen in Oklahoma.”
As ThinkProgress reported at the time, Inhofe joined Coburn and 35 other Republican senators in January 2013 in voting against a $50.5 billion aid package for communities hit by the storm, saying it contained too much “pork.”
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that President Barack Obama has issued a major disaster declaration for the area, allowing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to assist in recovery efforts.
Watch Inhofe’s interview with Jansing, aired Tuesday, below.
By Igor Volsky/Think Progress As the Senate prepares to take up a comprehensive gun safety bill on Thursday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) told reporters that the coming debate will have nothing to do with the families of the victims from Newtown, Connecticut.
“See, I think it’s so unfair of the administration to hurt these families, to make them think this has something to do with them when, in fact, it doesn’t,” Inhofe said and suggested that Obama is manipulating and misinforming the families for political purposes.
Obama called on Congress to support gun safety legislation during a speech in Hartford, Connecticut on Monday. He then traveled with 12 families whose loved ones were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School back to D.C. on Air Force One to help him lobby lawmakers in favor of a Senate proposal that expands background checks to all purchases, cracks down on gun trafficking and invests in school safety.
Inhofe is part of a group of 14 senators who have pledged to block consideration of the bill, though their effort to filibuster reform appear to have fallen short. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced on Tuesday that he would file cloture on the measure.
The Oklahoma senator has an A+ rating from the NRA and Gun Owners of America. He has taken at least $19,800 from the former since 1998.
Weeks ago, Koch-funded climate change denying Republicans on the House Energy Committeevoted unanimously in favor of the Upton-Inhofe billto eliminate the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The Republican-controlled House is expected to pass the bill later this week and Rep. Gerry Connollly (D-VA) wants to call a spade a spade and officially change the name of the bill to a more appropriate title:
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) wants to change the title of a bill that would permanently block Environmental Protection Agency climate regulations to the “Koch Brothers Appreciation Act,” a reference to the billionaire brothers who are active in Republican politics.
Connolly has submitted to the House Rules Committee a series of amendments that would change the title of the bill to everything from the “Middle Eastern Economic Development and Assistance Act” to the “Head in the Sand Act.”
Others include the … “Oil Producing Economy Capitulation Act.”
The Upton-Inhofe bill is not expected to pass the Senate. But If approved, the bill would would overturn a 2007 Supreme Court decision which ruled that the EPA has the right to regulate car tailpipe emissions under the Clean Air Act. This legislation has been a top priority for the Kochs and their network of the conservative think tank and astroturf groups.
For more on the Kochs, see the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s new report on “What You Need to Know About the Financiers of the Radical Right.”
UPDATESen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), in response to the proposed alternative name amendments, told Connolly and House Democrats this afternoon to “Get a life.”
Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) today introduced legislation with Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) to block the Environmental Protection Agency from implementing Clean Air Act protections against global warming pollution, rejecting the counsel of America’s public health advocates. A boon to Koch Industries and the other polluters who supported his campaign, Upton’s legislation would nullify the EPA’s Supreme Court-mandated scientific finding that burning fossil fuels is damaging our climate system. At a climate hearing on this week Upton justified his legislation by claiming the threat greenhouse gases pose to air quality and public health is a “myth”:
So let’s dispel a myth: air quality and public health will not be harmed or affected in any way by efforts to slow and then stop EPA’s expansive global warming agenda under the Clean Air Act. . . . . So we can stop the EPA from imposing cap and tax and the Clean Air Act will continue to make our families and communities healthier places. So let’s listen to the facts:this issue is not about air quality and public health, it’s about jobs.
Watch it:
By rejecting the clean energy economy, the only job Upton seems interested in saving is his own. Moreover, Upton’s denial of reality comes just days after the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association warned policymakers of the grave threat global warming poses to the health our families and communities. Based on scientific studies, experts agree that the following are key health risks from carbon pollution:
– More than doubled asthma rates and lengthened asthma season
– Threatened access to clean drinking water
– Increases in airborne and insect borne illnesses
– Increases in morbidity and mortality due to heat waves and other extreme weather
– Increases in diarrheal, respiratory, and heart disease
– Increased risk of salmonella spread as average temperatures rise
The health risks of climate pollution are particularly severe among low-income communities, children, and the elderly. With this attempt to rewrite the Clean Air Act, Upton is protecting polluter profits at the expense of his own constituents. And that’s no myth.
By Alex Seitz-Wald
While much ink has been spilled exploring the civil war between far-right tea party conservatives and more moderate Republicans, there appears to be a new rift emerging among the die-hard conservative wing in the Senate. Echoing the demands of the tea party movement, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) proposed yesterday a ban on earmarks in the Senate, and is aggressively whipping his colleagues to support it. While Republican leaders offered strong rhetoric on the campaign trail about opposing earmarks, now that the GOP has successfully taken power, they have been cool to DeMint’s proposal.
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) — whom National Journal ranked as the most conservative senator in 2009 — has gone even further, declaring “an all-out war within the Senate GOP conference next week to defeat an earmark moratorium.” Inhofe has said he will take to the Senate floor Monday to deliver a “pretty strong statement” against the ban, and to call out DeMint for supporting earmarks before he was against them. DeMint “was really pro-earmark. … He ran as a pro-earmarker” as a House Member in 2004, Inhofe told Roll Call.
In an interview with conservative radio host Ed Morrissey yesterday, Inhofe said people like DeMint who oppose earmarks are “brainwashed,” adding that if his fellow senators vote to ban earmarks they are voting to “trash the constitution and reject their oath of office”:
INHOFE: They’ve been demagoguing this whole thing on earmarks, but you’ll never convince the American people of it because they are so thoroughly brainwashed. You say earmark, they say, oh, earmarks are bad. But then when they stop and define the earmarks, then they think, that is what the Constitution — that is what James Madison said we are supposed to be doing in the House and the Senate.
So my concern is this…these guys will come in and the first vote they will cast is to trash the Constitution and reject their oath of office. I know that sounds extreme, but I don’t want these guys sitting around worrying about whether or not we will not do our job and whether we will cede our power to the president, or not.
Listen here :
Meanwhile, tea party leaders are furious that conservative favorites like Sen.-elect Rand Paul (R-KY) have suggested they will request earmarks. Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, told the Washington Independent’s Jesse Zwick today that the tea party will hold members accountable if they don’t support an earmark ban. “This is a fundamental issue — it’s both substantive and symbolic. … This is a vote that will never go away, like TARP,” she said. In fact, she issued a threat to those who oppose an earmark ban, saying, “in 2012 when they have aggressive, well-funded primary challengers, they’ll know why.” Indeed, her group sent an action alert to members today saying, “Our first battle with the newly empowered GOP” will be over earmarks.
By Tanya Somanader
In an interview last night with Newsmax, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) chided President Obama for his response to the BP oil disaster, stating that Obama “hasn’t made a good decision yet on that whole cleanup.” Claiming that Obama had “flunked” the test of presidential leadership, he saw President Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina as a
Remember the criticism George Bush got during Katrina? They said it was a lack of leadership. Let me tell you, that leadership looks pretty good right now.
This is the first time he’s had a really tough test and he flunked. It’s not just me that is saying he’s provided no leadership.
Inhofe’s comparison does in fact echo other top conservatives leaders’ enthusiasm to call BP’s oil spill “Obama’s Katrina.” But as Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum has pointed out, “Other than proximity to the Louisiana coast, this catastrophe has nothing in common with Hurricane Katrina: That was an unstoppable natural disaster that turned into a human tragedy because of an inadequate government response. This is just an unstoppable disaster, period. It will be a human tragedy precisely because no government response is possible.” A reminder here of how Bush delayed paying any real attention to Katrina for days.
In an interview with American Family Association (AFA) radio yesterday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) argued against repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT), arguing that basically, members of the U.S. military are too bigoted to be willing to fight and die for the “guy in the next foxhole” if that guy happens to be gay:
INHOFE: For those of us — and I’m one of them — who have gone through the military, gone through basic training, and you stop and think — it just doesn’t make any sense. Second of all, it’s just not working. You have women, men, then you have a third group to deal with, and they’re not equipped to do that.
And you know — you hear the stories all the time. A military guy — I happen to be Army, and Army and Marines always feel that when we’re out there, we’re not doing it for the flag or the country; we’re doing it for the guy in the next foxhole. And that would dramatically change that.
Watch it:
Inhofe shouldn’t assume that all members of the military are as homophobic as he is. A December 2006 survey of servicemembers who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan found that 73 percent of those polled were “comfortable with lesbians and gays.” The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network has reported that more than 500 U.S. soldiers are “out” to their colleagues and continue to serve. When Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen announced his personal belief that now is the time to repeal DADT, he cited the fact that he has served with gay comrades since 1968.
“I also believe that the great young men and women of our military can and would accommodate such a change,” he added, giving members of the military more credit than Inhofe did. “I never underestimate their ability to adapt.” (HT: Right Wing Watch
