UPDATED 12:30 PM EDT to add link at bottom...It was 2004. Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts. Heavy rains caused flooding in his state, which required him to request Federal Disaster relief funds. Later that year, the Massachusetts legislature passed a proposal to allocate $5.7M in state funds for a flood protection project. Then-Governor Romney
vetoed it. In 2006, the town of Peabody was flooded again. Local officials blamed Romney for vetoing the funds that could've prevented it.
Fast forward to the current presidential race. Last year in June during the seemingly never-ending Republican primary debates, candidate Romney was asked whether FEMA should be eliminated.
He was emphatic in his answer:
"Absolutely," he said. "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. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?"
[..]
"We cannot -- we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," Romney replied. "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."
[..]
The Washington Post's Greg Sargent adds: "There’s another nugget here worth highlighting, though. In that appearance, Romney also suggested it would be 'even better' to send any and all responsibilities of the federal government 'to the private sector,' disaster response included. So: Romney essentially favored privatizing disaster response."
Earlier this year, he continued to push the austerity idea further when he said
America doesn't need any more firemen, policemen or teachers.
Of course - that was "Pre-Sandy". Now he is desperately trying to shake the etch-a-sketch and make people forget that Romney cares more about money than people.
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