Touring several storm-damaged cities in New Jersey today, Vice President Joe Biden promised a crowd in Seaside Heights that they’ve got a “homeboy” in the White House who will help them out.
“If you’re not an Easterner it’s hard to understand that the ocean to us is the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park and everything else combined. It is a gigantic part of not only our economy but who we are. It’s a gigantic part of the culture as well,” Biden said, according to the White House pool report.
During a tour of the boardwalk, Biden looked at a roller coaster now under water and joked that reporters might push him off the pier.
In front of a business called the Sand Castle, backdropped by a large pile of what appeared to be lumber from the destroyed boardwalk, Biden promised “every time the rest of the country is in real trouble, New Jersey and Delaware and New York and Connecticut, etc., we respond, we respond.”
“And it’s going to be a heavy lift. These are difficult times in terms of budgets but the president has made it clear that we are going to do everything we can to make sure that the Corps is fully funded, that FEMA has their needs and that all the programs that exist under the auspices of the federal government not only continue to exist but are funded so that we can make sure that this area of the country is fully, fully, fully restored,” Biden said.
“So as the president said when he was up here with the governor, we’re not going anywhere. We’re not not going anywhere. And you’ve got a homeboy in the deal who gets it.”
Upon landing at Newark-Liberty International, Biden greeted Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) by saluting and exclaiming, “Your holiness!”
Biden was showed pictures of boats and water on devastated New Jersey Transit tracks, he said, “Holy mackerel!”
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