Appropriations

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is supportive of passing a bill to augment disaster funding to pay for Superstorm Sandy, Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) told The Hill Wednesday.

King said that he met with Boehner and that the Speaker said once the Federal Emergency Management Agency makes a formal request, the ball can get rolling — likely in the lame-duck session.

King said Boehner told him the new disaster aid would not need to be offset by spending cuts.

"That's what he said, yes" King said.

Such a request would be a necessary first step for action from Congress to address the storm's devastation.

Boehner will deliver a statement Wednesday afternoon calling on both sides to focus on a solution on tax rates and spending cuts.

The administration could use its authority to temporarily delay the spending portion of the fiscal cliff early next year.

Democratic senators from New York and New Jersey are praising the federal government on Thursday for increasing disaster funding to clean up the devastation from Hurricane Sandy -- but are also demanding more.

Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) announced Wednesday that he will introduce legislation to provide $12 billion in new emergency assistance funds in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, a move Republicans say is premature.

Fattah, an Appropriations subcommittee chairman, said that the money to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would not be offset by cuts elsewhere.

He said “we cannot do it on the cheap. Congress must step up and provide the federal resources this emergency requires.”

Fattah's Philadelphia district was hit hard by the storm, as were the New Jersey-New York area.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney refused to answer questions about his support for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is coordinating the response to Hurricane Sandy's devastation, according to reports from an event in Ohio.

Hurricane Sandy is barreling toward the East Coast, putting the budget for the Federal Emergency Management Agency back into the spotlight in the final days of the presidential campaign.

At the liberal-leaning The Huffington Post, Ryan Grimm writes that during the GOP primary, Mitt Romney appeared to say he favored shifting FEMA's responsibilities to the states or privatizing them.

"We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," Romney says in a video clip. 

Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg said that the former governor simply wants states to have more say in how FEMA money is spent.

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Romney has relentlessly criticized Obama on the so-called sequester at nearly every Virginia stop

Members of New York's congressional delegation traveled to Ground Zero Monday to demand funds to compensate victims not be cut.