Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) is disrespecting victims of the recent hurricane by referring to a failed bill that would fund relief as “a disaster,” the DSCC claims.
Flake, who is running for Senate in Arizona, used the term to describe a Continuing Resolution put forward by Speaker Boehner that went down thanks to major defections from his party. Republicans, including Flake, complained that it set spending too high by using the recent debt ceiling agreement as a spending baseline instead of the GOP’s April budget.
“Why in the world would we add $24 billion?” Flake told Bloomberg TV. “It’s a disaster.”
But the plan also went down because Democrats refused to vote for it over its use of budget cuts to offset disaster relief. And the DSCC claims Flake’s language was poorly chosen as a result.
“What planet is Jeff Flake living on?,” spokesman Matt Canter said in a statement. “Jeff Flake’s extreme Tea Party fight to deprive victims of natural disaster aid is bad, but his extremely tone deaf rhetoric is worse. ”
Needless to say, it’s more than a bit of a stretch — it’s not like Flake said he felt worse than a hurricane victim over this bill or something along those lines. But Democrats think that Republican intransigence on disaster aid is a winning issue, and they’re looking for every opportunity to highlight the vote.
