Carolyn Maloney: “All along the east coast, families are struggling to recover from superstorm Sandy. That makes avoiding the fiscal cliff…”

“All along the east coast, families are struggling to recover from superstorm Sandy. That makes avoiding the fiscal cliff even more important. Unless we come together in this body to reach across the aisle and compromise, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, which is helping thousands and thousands of people and small businesses recover from this disaster, could be cut as much as $848 million. Cutting FEMA would be a manmade disaster that would cripple relief efforts in my home State of New York and in many other States. I don't believe that anyone in this body campaigned on raising the unemployment rate or campaigned to see the U.S. economy fall back into a recession, which would happen if we went over this fiscal cliff. I hope that no one here wants to place a significant new tax burden on the middle class. In these final days of Congress, let's reach across the aisle, let's reach to one another and work together on the critical problems we need to solve. We need to avoid the fiscal cliff. ____________________”