New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Sunday slammed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans, including the nine from her state, saying they "complain like crazy" about immigration but refuse to work with President Joe Biden on a solution for a border that is "too open right now."
"It can be done," Hochul, a Democrat, said on CBS News's "Face the Nation." "We want them to have a limit on who can come across the border… people coming from all over the world are finding their way through, simply saying they need asylum, and the majority of them seem to be ending up in the streets of New York and that is a real problem for New York City."
She added that there are "125,000 newly arrived individuals, and the state is being taxed."
"We are always so proud of the fact that New York has the Statue of Liberty in our harbor," Hochul said. "We are one of the most diverse places on earth because of our welcoming nature. It's in our DNA to welcome immigrants."
However, the governor said, "There has to be some limits in place."
"Congress has to put more controls at the border and not in this budget threat, shutdown threat, talk about eliminating positions for Border Patrol," she said. "We actually need to double or quadruple those numbers. So get back to work and do your jobs."
Hochul also on Sunday called for a reassessment on how states and homeowners are reimbursed through FEMA after cataclysmic weather events, speaking out after torrential rains last week shut down subways, part of LaGuardia Airport, and more because of flooding.
"What we're doing right now is asking the local counties and the boroughs that were affected to add up the amount of money," she said. "It has to hit a certain threshold in order to be eligible for FEMA reimbursement, and that's another whole topic about how with these all too frequent 100-year storms, and indeed we had a 1,000-year storm event just a couple of months ago."
Federal help is needed, she added, to build up the state's resiliency and help business owners that had to shut down as well as reimbursing communities for overtime and extra resources that were needed.
"We had 28 rescues from our Swiftwater rescue teams and all that should be reimbursable from the federal government, Hochul said. "But again, for the Republicans in Congress to even toy with the fact and hold over our heads, there might not be flood insurance or disaster assistance up until the final hour, that's unconscionable. And it's tone-deaf to what states like New York and many others are going through in this new era of climate change where the unknown is becoming the norm here."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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