I’ve never been through a major earthquake, although I’ve experienced some minor tremors, the first early on a New Year’s Day in upstate New York while I was still a teenager. Just as you read about in animal behavior books, the dog, lying at the foot of my bed, apparently sensed something was up, jumped off and scurried out of the room mere seconds before the shaking began. Not a word of warning from her. So much for man’s best friend.

The 5.8 we had on the afternoon of August 23 was like an aftershock I experienced out in Burbank a number of years ago, while working in post-production on a documentary. It felt like a truck had hit the building. This time, there was a thump and I looked out the window to see if something heavy-duty was rolling down Seventh Avenue. Nothing — but the apartment kept wobbling up and down. Then another hard thump and more wobbling.

Hours later, just off the phone with my brother and sister in Washington, DC, who had been in a taxi and felt nothing, I noticed that several of the pictures on the walls were now hanging at peculiar angles. That was the extent of damage at my house.

As for Irene, I live in what the city has designated Evacuation Zone C, meaning we would be sent out of the neighborhood if a direct hit by a Category 3 or 4 storm – or maybe an asteroid — seemed imminent. That didn’t happen, but my girlfriend Pat was moved to a hotel in midtown because the television newsroom at which she works needed her close at hand. Graciously, she invited me along.

(Coincidentally, the hotel was the first at which I ever stayed in New York City alone, also during my teenage years. The student rate back then was $12 a night.)

Fearing high winds, in parts of the hotel they weren’t placing guests above the tenth floor. We had a small room, on the third floor away from the street, so little chance of windows blowing in, which was good, facing the airshaft, which was bad. One look out the window and we quickly drew the shades; it looked like the place where pigeons go to die – or at least throw their trash. Maybe the storm would give it a good wash.

It didn’t. Irene weakened as it reached Coney Island and we slept right through the main action, finally returning to my place early Sunday afternoon. Branches and leaves littered the streets and trees were down by a nearby playground. Plenty of rain and wind but nothing like the loss of life, power outages and billions worth of wind and flood damage inflicted outside the city. Beyond the media centers of New York and Washington, where reporters were quick to judge the storm “not so bad,” there was more than enough disaster to go around, bringing misery to millions.

I remembered Hurricane/Tropical Storm Agnes in June 1972. It roared through central Virginia and Pennsylvania up into the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, creating more damage than any hurricane in the United States before it. (That time, Agnes hit DC with a vengeance — more than a foot of rain in parts of the area and 16 deaths as people were swept away in the floodwaters. I was there, and will never forget the usually placid Rock Creek roiling like Colorado River rapids. The Potomac overflowed into the C & O Canal, and a crowd of us stood in Georgetown watching the water slowly creep up lower Wisconsin Avenue.)

Fresh water from Agnes’ floods flushed into the saltwater of Chesapeake Bay, damaging the seafood industry there for years, and the damage inflicted on the tracks of already financially crippled railways in the Northeast helped lead to the creation of the federally funded Conrail freight system (later divided into CSX and the Norfolk Southern Railway).

Storms like Agnes and Irene are insidious, often striking slowly over time in ways that can be unpredictable and far more damaging than anticipated. Government preparedness and response are critical. There was no Federal Emergency Management Agency in 1972; in fact, like Conrail, its origins can be traced, in part, to the Agnes disaster. Jimmy Carter signed it into creation seven years later. Since then, FEMA has had noteworthy ups and downs, performing reasonably well when those who believe in the value of government are in power, suffering lamely when they’re not.

By all accounts, and at this writing, the White House, FEMA and other government agencies, including state and local, have acquitted themselves ably during the lead-up to Irene, the actual hurricane and its aftermath, although many remain in need. Eighteen FEMA teams were positioned along Irene’s path from Florida to Maine, spreading north as the storm proceeded toward New England, providing support, supplies and experienced advice all along the way.

As even The Washington Post’s resident smartass Dana Milbank had to admit, “Don’t expect anybody to throw a tea party, but Big Government finally got one right… a rare reminder that the federal government can still do great things, after all other possibilities have been exhausted.”

However, he continued, “Americans won’t have long to savor this new competence in government. NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] has already been hit with budget cuts that will diminish its ability to track storms, and FEMA, like much of the federal government, will lose about a third of its funding over the next decade if Tea Party Republicans have their way…

“Tea Partyers who denounce Big Government seem to have an abstract notion that government spending means welfare programs and bloated bureaucracies. Almost certainly they aren’t thinking about hurricane tracking and pre-positioning of FEMA supplies. But if they succeed in paring the government, some of these Tea Partyers (particularly those on the coasts or on the tornadic plains) may be surprised to discover that they have turned a Hurricane Irene government back into a Katrina government.”

Cuts have been approved by the House Appropriations Committee to the program that sends “hurricane hunter” aircraft into storms to measure data crucial for hurricane forecasts. Weather satellites are on the chopping block, too. At a May press conference, NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco warned, “The future funding for our satellite program is very much in limbo right now… We are likely looking at a period of time a few years down the road where we will not be able to do severe storm warnings and long-term weather forecasts that people have come to expect today.”

She noted that cutbacks had forced the agency to delay the launch of a much-needed satellite. As per NPR’s Jon Hamilton, “It would have traveled in a polar orbit, beaming down information for weather and climate forecasts. As a result, when the current satellite doing that job stops working, there will be no replacement.” It’s these polar orbiting satellites that also warn of deadly tornadoes and other severe weather conditions.

In the short term, the cost of Irene means diverting monies from the government’s Disaster Relief Fund, cash intended for tornado clean up in Joplin, Missouri, and other towns. Congress will need to vote for more, probably billions more. And hurricane season isn’t even over yet. (As I write, New Orleans faces Tropical Storm Lee and Hurricane Katia lurks in the Atlantic.)

But even though his Seventh Congressional District was damaged by Irene, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, our national scold, says no, not unless spending cuts are made elsewhere to offset the cost, dollar for dollar. (That includes earthquake damage, too, by the way, despite the fact that the epicenter of the August 23rd quake was in his Virginia district.)

“Just like any family would operate when it’s struck by disaster,” Cantor told Fox News, “it finds the money to take care of a sick loved one or what have you, and then goes without trying to buy a car or put an addition onto the house.” It’s more like “selling the family station wagon for spare parts,” the website Media Matters said, and a far cry from 2004 when Cantor came running to fellow Republicans George Bush and Tom Ridge for no-strings-attached federal disaster assistance after Tropical Storm Gaston hit home. Nor when Bush was president did Rep. Cantor ever scream for offsets when it came to tax breaks for the wealthy, waging war, or – surprise – raising the debt ceiling.

What he’s doing now is ornery, mean and just plain wrong — ideological purity overruling common sense. Even New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, fresh off his pre-Irene “Get the hell off the beach” performance and no stranger himself to pigheadedness, declared, “We don’t have time to wait for folks in Congress to figure out how they want to offset this stuff with other budget cuts… I don’t want to hear about the fact that offsetting budget cuts have to come first before New Jersey citizens are taken care of.”

Approving emergency aid in a national crisis is not to be held over our heads like some vindictive ransom note. It’s neither penny wise nor pound foolish; it’s immoral and, yes, un-American. This is not the way we were raised, not the way we were taught to treat one another. We lend a hand and figure out the costs later.

Yet in a time of national crisis, whether in or out of hurricane season, Cantor continues to spout pettifoggery and right wing Republicans go along with him, mindlessly nodding in obeisant agreement like so many bobble head dolls, even as the economy burns, infrastructure crumbles, funds are slashed and untold millions suffer.

Heckuva job, Eric.

From the Washington Post:

On Saturday, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) urged the Senate to quickly approve the House GOP version of the annual Homeland Security spending measure that includes $1 billion for additional disaster funding this year and $2.65 billion for fiscal 2012.

“Time and time again, the [Obama] administration has ignored the obvious funding needs of the Disaster Relief Fund, purposefully and irresponsibly underfunding the account and putting families and communities who have suffered from terrible disasters on the back burner,” Rogers said. “Now the administration has let the fund reach critically low levels, putting continued recovery at risk, without a plan for the future or a clear method for dealing with new disasters.”

Yep. Congressional Republicans have been begging — begging! — for the White House to spend more money on domestic federal agencies, but the White House, for some reason, insists on cutting spending. Those damn liberal small government fanatics.

Eric Cantor is joining the fight to give FEMA more of your taxpayer money, though he is at least demanding that spending be “offset” by cutting spending on other vague unnamed things the government does. (Oh, looks like they are cutting grants for clean energy vehicles.) The House GOP’s bill also helps fund disaster response by … cutting state grants for disaster preparedness. Because the GOP will always select the option that looks cheaper in the short term but that is significantly more expensive in the long run. That option is usually a political winner!

Such are the incentives of the American political system. The Pentagon spending $50 million on a “lightning weapon” that doesn’t work is business as usual but making sure our bridges are sturdy enough to withstand strong tropical storms is a low priority.

The bill to clean up New York City — which wasn’t hit nearly as hard as Southern states, and which didn’t experience a fraction of the flooding Vermont did — will be big, but that’s in large part because of the sorry state of New York’s ancient infrastructure. The commuter rails are crippled. The airports — especially JFK, which practically shuts down any time the wind picks up — are shut down. Thousands of outer-borough residents and many of the nearby suburbs are completely without power. These are some of the oldest cities in the country, and their power and water and transportation systems show it.

New York City’s mayor and city council have extremely limited control over the city’s mass transit system. Finding the cash to turn the NYPD into a paramilitary international intelligence agency is no problem. Replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge will take another decade. And replacing a bridge is at least a big, sexy project that state legislators love. It’s even harder to get people excited about addressing sand erosion in Rockaway Beach.

The Economist had a great piece on America’s low infrastructure spending and the political incentives that got us here. States are rewarded for building new highways instead of fixing existing roads, our gas tax is low, small states have disproportionate influence on spending, and the governor of New Jersey (who recently learned to love big government) can unilaterally cancel a transportation project in New York.

So the GOP can crow about funding FEMA, to clean up after we’re hit by tornadoes and hurricanes. But in a week, everyone in Washington (the White House included, most likely) will be back on the austerity bandwagon. Until the next disaster hits, and everyone wonders, again, how we could’ve let things get so bad.

Meanwhile, John Boehner, the speaker of the House, gave his five-step “two-step” plan to famous shouty radio guy Rush Limbaugh, before he showed it to his own conference. (Of course, his conference is full of morons and extremists, many of whom wouldn’t have known what to think about Boehner’s plan until Uncle Rush explained it, so this was more shrewd than disrespectful.)

This is, obviously, a Bad Sign For America. Erick Erickson and Rush Limbaugh are, at best, entertainers — they’re certainly not policy experts — and at worst (and they are very often at their worst) they are extreme demagogues, stirring up shit for fun and attention, always more interested in tribal victory against their enemies on “the Left” than they are in governing, or doing anything at all to improve America beyond constantly crowing about how much better it used to be.

People like Erick and Rush were supposed to exist to keep the rubes occupied while the grown-ups sat down with various monied interests to design policy around what was best for oil companies and defense contractors. They are not supposed to be where the GOP base and congressional leadership get their political information and strategy.

But! But but but. Do you know what actually made me get a bit sputtery with rage yesterday? It was not this “Republicans cannot figure out how to tie their shoes without an asinine TV pundit and Clinton talk radio relic telling them it’s OK” business. I expect as much from the modern GOP. It was this Tweet, from Dave Weigel, that set my teeth on edge:

Ominous elevator chatter in Capitol today: “Did you read what Friedman wrote about whether we need a third party?”

Because yes, of course, Thomas Friedman is who the “sensible” ones are listening to.

Thomas Friedman, riding in, with Michael Bloomberg in tow, from Aspen, on the winged stallion of radical centrism, inventing a plan to fix ALL OUR PROBLEMS by misidentifying them and making the actual problems worse. Thomas Friedman’s Sunday column was dumber, somehow, than the last 1,500 identical columns he’s written on the same subject. Faced with a legislative system with too many veto points and a polarized national electorate regularly splitting their votes between the right-wing party and the incoherent party of “everyone else,” Friedman suggests that we elect a third-party president via Web poll. Yes!!! THAT WILL SOLVE EVERYTHING. Someone with no power base in either party, selected by Reddit users. Can’t you just imagine how President Maru the Box Cat would be able to cut through this “partisanship” and get things done with “leadership” from the “radical center”? This Web poll third party will be the Amazon.com of politics, in that it will kill the Borders of politics. (I think the Borders of politics, in this example, is the labor movement. Sorry!)

Right now you have a situation where the rank-and-file Republicans are listening to irresponsible extremists and the “serious” “grown-ups” hammering out “responsible” plans are listening to simple-minded dolts, like Thomas Friedman, with absolutely no understanding of how politics work.

I honestly do not know which one is worse. Friedman, probably, because at least Rush Limbaugh understands how to work to get his intended policy result enacted. His taxes have certainly gone down, as he’s gotten richer, since he started his talk radio racket. Friedman seems to think the problem with his “moderate politics of a center-left rich guy” platform is that there isn’t a party for it. Mr. Friedman, meet President Obama, of the Democratic Party! I know you hate partisanship, but that is the method by which President Obama is trying to create your flat global technocratic playground dream world!

Though if everyone who takes Thomas Friedman seriously did start their own third party, we at least would no longer have to worry about anyone who takes Thomas Friedman seriously getting elected to public office.

Am I the only Jew in America who finds the House majority leader deeply embarrassing to our people? Am I the only tribe member who considers this smarmy yutz today’s numero-uno shonda fur die goyim?

Shonda what?

* * *

My father used to tell us a morality tale. Not long after the events of November 22 and 24, 1963, our rabbi attended an interfaith meeting of clergymen from our midsize New Jersey town. He later reported to his congregation a conversation he’d had at the gathering. “The Protestant minister,” Dad would say, “said to the rabbi, ‘I see one of your people got Lee Harvey Oswald.’ Jack Ruby was Jewish, you know. [Right, Dad, I know from the other 18 times you’ve told me the story.] And the rabbi said, ‘Yes, and I see one of yours got the president.’”

It was an article of faith among American Jews of my parents’ generation — people who came of age in the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s, when the best country clubs and colleges and suburbs and law firms still remained unpolluted by the Hebrew menace — that the bad example of any Jew (e.g., Jack Ruby, né Rubenstein) casts disgrace on every Jew, even though no one generalizes about Christians on the basis of a single bad apple (e.g., Lee Harvey Oswald). (Or even a string of bad apples: “Man, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson … all the way to Clinton and Bush and Obama. Those dirty Christian bastards control the government!”) Our shtetl-minded insecurity survives today — if not among all of us, if not as centrally in our lives — when anti-Semitism, in the West, anyway, is but a bad memory. (Right, Mel Gibson, Oliver Stone, Julian Assange, Helen Thomas, John Galliano, and Charlie Sheen?)

When a Jew is publicly bad — especially publicly really bad — large numbers of the rest of us Jews cringe. That Jew becomes a shonda fur die goyim — a disgrace for the non-Jews, an example for the gentiles to latch onto as evidence that every one of us is out to control their banks, run their newspapers, and make matzoh from the blood of their children. Think of the long list of Jewish financial miscreants of the past 25 years — Ivan Boesky, Mike Milken, Bernie Madoff, the gonifs at Goldman Sachs. Let’s see, rich Jewish financiers screwing millions of ordinary people — gee, that doesn’t play into any pernicious stereotypes about Jews, does it?

It’s gotten to the point that when I read about a swindler who is not one of us I’m ecstatic. A while ago the New York Times reported on the trial of an allegedly crooked defense contractor named Brooks: “A goy!” I said after reading the first paragraph. “Thank goodness. Keep reading.” I did, drooling with schadenfreude. Oh, this was a juicy one: According to the charges, he and another employee pulled down $190 million via stock fraud. To top it off, his company, which makes body armor for our troops in Afghanistan, allegedly paid out more than $6 million to cover his personal expenses, including plastic surgery for his wife and pornographic videos for his son.

But then came one last example of his obscene conspicuous consumption. The guy spent millions — hiring 50 Cent and Aerosmith as entertainment — on his daughter’s bat mitzvah. Bat mitzvah? So Brooks isn’t Brooks at all — he’s Brodsky or Bernstein or Bergman or Buxbaum, whose grandfather changed his name years ago so he could be one of the goys. Such a shonda!

And the neocons. Oy, the neocons. Do so many of these momzers, so keen on sending other parents’ children off to war, have to be tribe members? Ken Adelman, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Robert Kagan, Elliot Abrams, Scooter Libby, and the Podhoretzes.

And then there’s Anthony Weiner, that putz.

* * *

Okay, so maybe in 2011 the only non-Jews who care about or even notice the religion of the inside traders and the neocons are the whack jobs on the Internet, with their Jew Watch and their Zionist Occupational Government and their nostalgia for the good old days of Uncle Adolf. But I notice. Because what bothers me is not only — and not even primarily — the imputation of guilt by association that might be delivered by the world at large. More, it’s that the publicly bad Jew fails to live up to the ethical standards that we Jews, as Jews, should live up to.

In other words, Ivan Boesky, you should know better. In other words, William Kristol, reread the list of sins — the al chaits — we reel off on Yom Kippur. In other words, Eric Cantor, didn’t you learn anything from your upbringing? Were you out on your shul’s front steps enjoying a smoke when your rabbi sermonized about the Jewish obligation to lead an honorable life?

Evidently you didn’t learn, because if you had, you’d share my belief that just as Jews should not stage multibillion-dollar Ponzi schemes, so they should not threaten to bring about world economic calamity for no better reason than to curry favor among a bunch of mouth-breathing fanatics who don’t know a principle of economics from a pulled-pork sandwich. You’d understand that a man who counts himself among the People of the Book, a people that has won Nobel Prizes in a ratio as much as a hundred times its share of the world’s population, should not dismiss the learned opinions of credentialed economists who warn of dire consequences should Congress not do its duty and protect the full faith and credit of the American dollar. You’d know, without being told, that pointing a gun at working people everywhere and threatening to pull the trigger unless you get your way is immoral. You’d stop bullshitting everyone and admit that you and your fellow Republicans in Congress voted to raise the debt ceiling, with no conditions, seven times during the tenure of the last president from your party.

But that’s not all, Eric. What you’d know, above all else, is that Jews should not be Republicans.

Some decades ago Milton Himmelfarb wrote that Jews “earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans.” It was true then, it’s true now. Jews are still the one substantial ethnic group in our country that, on the whole, doesn’t vote its wallet. Not to over-praise the Democrats, who are way too cozy with Wall Street and whom we often support for no other reason than their nonmembership in the party of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and Pat Robertson. But the fact is that well-off people generally vote Republican and Jews generally don’t, even though we’ve participated in the American dream, and gone to law school and medical school and dental school and accounting school. (And, don’t forget, we control all the banks and newspapers.)

No less an authority than Richard Nixon used to complain to Henry Kissinger — talk about a shonda! — that all Jews were liberals. Norman Podhoretz, that shonda, wrote a whole book on the subject — “Why are Jews Liberals?”

What a waste of ink. I could have told him why in two minutes. It’s because Jews know what a majority can do to a minority. It’s because Jews grow up with burdens unshouldered by most other Americans — certainly most other white Americans — burdens of our history, stories of our desperate struggle to maintain the existence of our tiny people in a world indifferent at best, genocidal at worst, tales of Inquisitors and Cossacks and SS men.

And that’s why, Eric, if being Jewish means anything it means that we feel for the oppressed, the poor, the powerless. It means that we ask fat cats to pay a few more dollars to the IRS so that we don’t have to slash funding for Medicaid. It means that it’s an easy decision when we have to choose between continuing to pay subsidies to wildly profitable oil companies and retaining school lunch programs.

Eric, bubbeleh, put down the hair spray for a minute and pay attention. At the seder table every Passover we talk of freedom, we talk of justice. We don’t talk of cutting funds for the medical care of poor people. We recall that Moses said to Pharoah, “Let my people go.” He didn’t say, “Let my people pay a lower capital gains tax.”

* * *

I remember once reading a dishy article in the New York Times Magazine in which two Jews, a Hollywood producer and a Hollywood writer, described a game they called “Dumb Jews.” To play they would name tribe members who, contrary to the stereotype and our own positive self-image, were not necessarily the sharpest knives in the drawer.

I submit the congressman from Virginia:

“The markets are smarter than to just accept, as you call it, a clean vote on the debt ceiling.”

So the markets would prefer this idiotic game of chicken you’re playing?

Q: What is at the table now that is a compromise from your end? . . .

Mr. Cantor: The fact that we have been discussing voting for a debt ceiling increase.

That’s your compromise? Voting for a bill whose non-passage will bring misery to billions of people? That’s your definition of giving something up?

“Again, I don’t think the White House understands how difficult it is for fiscal conservatives to say they are going to vote for a debt ceiling increase.”

So members of Congress don’t have to suck it up now and then and cast a “difficult” vote? Can he really be that dense?

On the other hand, maybe Cantor doesn’t believe the stupid things he says. Maybe he’s simply craven, unbothered that he’s building a name for himself by telling lies that pander to the ignorance of the yahoos who attend rallies of the Tea Party. Maybe he’s less a true believer than a cynic when he acts the role of commissar assigned to make sure John Boehner does not deviate from the Grover Norquist party line. Maybe he’s aware that his juvenile self-aggrandizement threatens to bring the nation to its knees — and just doesn’t care. Maybe he’s not a dumb Jew. Maybe he’s just another bad Jew.

Once upon a time Jews could be good Republicans and good Jews. Jacob Javits, Louis Lefkowitz, Warren Rudman, even Arlen Specter when he was starting out. Sure, once upon a time honorable tribe members could hold views weighted toward solution of problems through the private sector rather than the public.

Those days are gone. Does the GOP even pretend to care about the poor and the powerless anymore? Even more alarming, does it have any respect for learning?

The Republican Party is in the hands of bigots and radicals and ignoramuses, people who think default on the national debt would be salutary, climate change is a hoax, and our barely left-of-center president is the reincarnation of Joseph Stalin. It’s in the hands of Christianists, people who hate Muslims now that they’ve decided not to hate Jews. In fact, they love Jews and they love Israel — because the Book of Revelation tells them that the Jewish state will hasten the day when Christ returns and all Jews are swallowed into hell.

Erickel, you call these people your friends?

Maybe it’s my own generational outlook as a Jew born during the baby boom, but as many times as I see this shmegegi acting as spokesman for his caucus, I still can’t buy that his aggressively, radically goyische colleagues take him seriously. Is he a token, given his seat of power to help convince Americans that not all Republican officeholders are white fundamentalist Christians? Or is he something much less? Is he their mascot?

Boychik, stop embarrassing your people. Stop behaving like a spoiled brat whose parents won’t allow the female dancers at his bar mitzvah to wear Hooters uniforms. If you don’t have a seder to go to next year, come to my house. We’ll review what you should have learned but never did. Be the wise son, Eric, not the wicked son.

Don’t forget to bring your bubby’s chopped liver. Only this time, make it with schmaltz, not lard.

Among the 15 politicians pointed out by Greenpeace, these five caught our eye:

• Presidential hopeful Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). The fossil fuel industry has given Bachmann $131,980 since the 2006 election season. Bachmann voted to stop EPA from reducing mercury and other toxic air pollution from cement plants; she asked EPA not to treat coal ash as hazardous. She is cosponsoring a bill Coal Caucus members are pushing to strip EPA’s budget to develop any protections from coal ash.
• House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.). The Fossil fuel industry has given Cantor $655,547 since the 2000 election season. Cantor voted yes to an amendment in the budget bill that would stop EPA from developing protections from coal ash pollution. He voted yes to keep EPA from making coal companies reduce global warming pollution. He voted three times in support of coal-industry amendments on mountaintop removal mining.
• Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), Chair of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power. The fossil fuel industry has given Whitfield $426,447 since the 1998 election season. He has fought EPA safeguards while the three coal plants in Whitfield’s district have caused 186 deaths per year. None of these three plants in Whitfield’s district have installed mercury controls.
• Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The fossil fuel industry has given Upton $541,450 since the 1998 election season. He sponsored and pushed through his committee a bill to keep EPA from making coal companies reduce global warming pollution.
• Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Il.) Co-Chair of the Congressional Coal Caucus. Costello has received $168,650 since the 1998 election season from the fossil fuel industry. Coal Caucus members are threatening with a bill to strip EPA’s budget to reduce mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants.

Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described Fred Upton as a representative from Minnesota.