President Obama takes swipe at Bush during Gulf trip, Reid and Carney comment

President Obama took a quick break from the campaign trail on Monday to be the consoler-in-chief, telling victims of Hurricane Isaac, which ravaged the Gulf Coast last week, that "nobody's a Democrat or a Republican, we're all just Americans looking out for one another."

After meeting with officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) along with local officials, Obama — who will accept his party's nomination in Charlotte, N.C., later this week — sent a clear message to the victims while seeking to contrast his efforts with the previous administration: "We're here to help."

In brief remarks on a flooded street in Louisiana, the president took a veiled swipe at his predecessor George W. Bush, whose administration has been accused of not responding quick enough to help victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In the past, Obama said, "We haven't seen the kind of coordination that is necessary in response to these kinds of disasters."

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/247227-obama-takes-swipe-at-bush-during-louisiana-trip


Charges of politics surround visits to hurricane damage
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/03/charges-of-politics-surround-visits-to-hurricane-damage/
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When it comes to the kinds of choices politicians make in Washington about what their priorities are, it is worth noting that last year there was an effort to underfund the money that's used to provide relief to Americans when they've been hit by disasters," Carney said. "And that effort was led by Congressman Paul Ryan, who is now running to be vice president of the United States."

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Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the top Democrat in the Senate - who has also charged that Romney went without paying taxes for a decade, which he said an unnamed person told him – harshly characterized Romney's trip as political.

"It is the height of hypocrisy for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to make a pretense of showing sympathy for the victims of Hurricane Isaac when their policies would leave those affected by this disaster stranded and on their own," Reid said in a statement.

"Under a Romney-Ryan administration, we would not have been prepared to respond to Hurricane Isaac," he charged. "If Paul Ryan and his fellow House Republicans had succeeded in blocking disaster relief last fall, there would have been no aid for the victims of Isaac today. And Paul Ryan's budget would gut disaster funding, making it much harder to get aid to our fellow Americans in their time of need."