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AOC blames GOP inaction for costing ‘9/11’s worth of people’

“The last time we left, again, we lost over one 9/11’s worth of people due to this lack of action,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

By Aaron Sull, World Israel News

With the U.S. coronavirus death toll surpassing the number of 9/11 fatalities, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) blamed the Republicans’ lack of action before going into recess as a leading factor.

“In my district and in New York City we’ve had more deaths than 9-11,” Ocasio-Cortez said during a Tuesday night interview on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

“We are going to pass a small potatoes bill and then we are talking about recessing again until May 4,” she said. “The last time we left, again, we lost over one 9/11’s worth of people due to this lack of action.”

Ocasio-Cortez was referring to an upcoming Congressional vote on a $484 billion, GOP-sponsored bill aimed at providing funds for small businesses to pay their expenses and keep employees on the payroll.

According to Ocasio-Cortez, the bill does not address essential measures, such as funding hospitals and making more coronavirus tests available.

“Democrats fought very, very hard to get basic things like testing. Republicans didn’t want to fund hospitals. They didn’t want to fund mass testing, which is what is going to allow us to reopen the economy,” she said.

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During the interview, Maddow asked Ocasio-Cortez if she would vote on the bill despite its shortcomings, to which the Democratic congresswoman answered: “Something is better than nothing.”

“While something may be better than nothing, it is happening in the context of Congress having gone on recess for a month,” she said, adding “at some point, we have to raise our hands and say, ‘when is the solution coming?’”

As of Wednesday, more than 14,800 deaths in New York City have been recorded, according to data by Johns Hopkins University.

The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack killed 2,996.