As recovery efforts from Hurricane Idalia continue, Representative Greg Steube (R-FL) appeared on Fox Business's Bottom Line, where he expressed relief the storm passed through as predicted and criticized the Biden Administration's attempts to attach funding for Ukraine to disaster relief funding bills.
"It is obviously not as bad as it was during Ian," said Rep. Steube, "We are still getting reports of catastrophic damage in the part where the storm came through, but thankfully not as bad as Ian from the early reports."
Additionally, he called it a "blessing" that Idalia stayed the course early forecasts predicted, allowing residents plenty of time to prepare.
"So that has been the blessing. Floridians have had plenty of time to get themselves evacuated from areas that were going to be affected by storm surge and deal with the things that they need to deal with to serve their families and their businesses," Rep. Steube continued.
The conversation then shifted to how poorer Florida counties would potentially require more disaster relief funding, which gave Steube the opportunity to blast the Biden Administration for wanting to add Ukraine money to disaster supplements, especially as his own district has still not received money towards recovery from Hurricane Ian last year.
"Here is the whole politics of disaster supplementals: My district and Southwest Florida still have not gotten disaster supplemental from almost a year ago now. I have been working on a bill to give some tax relief to the citizens who were affected by Hurricane Ian. We still have not passed that because the Biden Administration wants to tack on funding for Ukraine on disaster supplementals," Steube said, accusing Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) of using supplementals as political pawns.
Moreover, host Sean Duffy noted President Biden has attempted to blame House Republicans for the slowness of disaster supplementals delivery because they voted against the inclusion of Ukraine funds, which, in turn, will make them look "insensitive."
"That is exactly how this Administration operates," accused Steube, "If you are going to vote against that because it has Ukraine funding in it, "oh, I do not want to support my own district." It has been catastrophically affected by Hurricane Ian. Floridians have now been affected by Ian and now this storm. And just because they want to attach all this other funding to it. This is how the Washington swamp works. This is how Democrats and the Administration have worked the entire time that I have been in Congress; they use these types of issues that make it very hard to go against these things that they want to get into funding supplementals. And it is absolutely not America First policy. It is not the American way. We should stand for America first," Steube concluded.
Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) had recently delivered similar remarks, saying that putting Ukraine funding into disaster supplementals "should never be one for the other."
