Hurricane Ian has resulted in a "tremendous" blow to people who are already suffering from the economy and the COVID pandemic, Rep. Ralph Norman, whose state of South Carolina suffered a direct hit from the massive storm on Friday, said on Newsmax Saturday.
"You look at how much people are paying at the gas pumps, at the grocery store on products they can get, and COVID has made a tremendous hit on all Americans," the South Carolina Republican said on Newsmax's "Saturday Agenda." "The pocketbook is shrinking. And the fact that now with the insurance rates, which are bound to go up with the claims like this — it's not good news, not just for South Carolina but all over the country."
The nation's economic woes, he added, were "self-inflicted" by the Biden administration.
"I see no letup in it. And it's going to take a toll, particularly in my industry, housing, because so goes housing, so goes the economy," he added.
South Carolina fared "pretty well" compared to Florida after Ian made landfall Friday afternoon near Georgetown, said Norman, but still, "flooding was rampant" and about 200,000 people were without power.
Power has been restored to all but about 60,000 people now, he continued, but the storm is expected to harm agriculture, as crops were also planted later than usual this year in the state's corn, soybean and cotton farms.
"Time will tell what it did to those," he said.
Meanwhile, when asked about the storm response from the federal government, Norman said instead he wanted to applaud local efforts by Gov. Henry McMaster and local and state entities, as "overall, it's been a quick recovery."
On the federal level, Norman said he's concerned about how Congress has been spending a great deal of money but falling short when it comes to allocations on natural disasters.
"They've been spending money on the Green New Deal, left and right," he said. "It's like dropping money from a helicopter. If there's ever a case to get on a firm financial foot, it's now. You need to have allocations for things like disasters like this that happen. This administration's done a terrible job of that, and I don't know of too many things that they've done right as far as the economy and other things."
But still, Americans do come together in a time of crisis, and they are doing that in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, said Norman.
"The companies that send crews to Florida and South Carolina, they're taking care of it," he said. "To go from 200,000 who were without power to 63,000, when [the storm] officially hit Friday at 2 p.m., is pretty amazing. The recovery will go quickly in South Carolina. And hopefully, in Florida it will go as quickly as possible to get them back on their feet, but it's going to take time."
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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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