Vox points out the towering hypocrisy in the vote by 69 Republican members of the U.S. House, including Rep. French Hill of Little Rock, against a disaster aid package for Puerto Rico and other parts of the U.S.
They said it would increase the deficit. Vox focused on Rep. Dave Brat, but the analysis applies to the others such as French Hill, too.
Brat — like many of his conservative colleagues in the House Freedom Caucus who voted against the aid — said he wanted to see ways to offset the cost of these supplemental relief packages. Those demands, which range from reforms of the National Flood Insurance Program to proposals that slash social safety net programs — would take time, and leave people already in life-threatening situations hanging.
But this wrenching concern over the deficit — particularly when the situation in Puerto Rico remains so dire — is hard for some to swallow when conservatives are simultaneously pushing forward a tax reform package that could leave a more than a trillion-dollar hole in the deficit and have signed on to spending bills that added more than $100 billion to defense spending, without the immediate promise of offsets elsewhere.
But the conservative line in the House doesn’t seem fazed by such dissonance.