Mitt Romney on Hurricane Sandy: “We Cannot Afford Federal Disaster Relief”

OK, so Romney wasn’t talking about Hurricane Sandy when he said this last year.  Nevertheless, this is a chilling portrait of how President Romney would respond to a natural disaster.

(H./T to okjimm where I learned about this story.)

During a debate last June, CNN’s John King was talking about recent floods and tornadoes, including the devastation in Joplin, MO.  King said:  “FEMA is about to run out of money, and there are some people who say do it on a case-by-case basis and some people who say, you know, maybe we're learning a lesson here that the states should take on more of this role. How do you deal with something like that?”

Romney said:

“Absolutely. 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 ourselves the opposite question. What should we keep? We should take all of what we're doing at the federal level and say, what are the things we're doing that we don't have to do? And those things we've got to stop doing, because we're borrowing $1.6 trillion more this year than we're taking in. We cannot —”

King: “Including disaster relief, though?”

Romney:

“We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. 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.”

It doesn’t get any more crystal clear than this, people — straight from the horse’s ass’s mouth.  If you live in a region that’s prone to floods, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes — you’ll be on your own next year.

President Romney says Suck It Up.