Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) was pressed about his stance on past hurricane relief funding on Sunday as he seeks assistance for his home state after it was hit by a monster storm last week.
CNN’s Dana Bash, co-anchor of State of the Union, asked Rubio about his letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee, written with Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) and sent on Friday, asking for millions of dollars in disaster relief for Florida communities affected by Hurricane Ian.
When asked why he voted “no” on a $50 billion relief package after Hurricane Sandy hit northeastern states in 2012, Rubio said there were other aspects to the package that had “nothing to do with disaster relief.”
HURRICANE IAN ‘NEAR WORST-CASE SCENARIO’
“I have always voted for hurricane and disaster relief,” he said. “What I didn’t vote for in Sandy is because they had included things like a roof for a museum in Washington, D.C., for fisheries in Alaska … I would never put out there that we should go use a disaster relief package for Florida as a way to pay for other things people want around the country.”
However, Bash said that upon reading a Congressional Research Service report on the package, she determined that the roof was damaged by the hurricane and that Alaska’s fisheries were affected by another disaster. Rubio did not respond to her comment.
As noted by Politifact, Rubio supported a leaner $24 billion disaster relief bill, but that legislation was defeated in a party-line vote.
Overall, Rubio said, the Biden administration and FEMA have responded well to Hurricane Ian, so there are “no complaints there.”
“I think in times like this, people realize that it’s not about politics, it shouldn’t be,” he said. “And so that’s the way it’s always been, and as was our expectation.”
The senator said there will be more needed from the federal government to rebuild the communities, stating that areas such as Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel will “never look the same again.”
Rubio added that Ian is not the only hurricane that has recently affected U.S. citizens after Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico two weeks ago, knocking power out for the entire island.
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The Florida senator said that although some areas of the island have been able to return to life as normal, approximately 200,000 people still remain without power.
“We will do everything we can, we always have, to support Puerto Rico now in the recovery after this, yet another devastating storm,” Rubio said.
