Was the disaster relief bill for Hurricane Sandy "two thirds pork spending"?

Question

In this video, Ted Cruz is asked by the newsanchor how he feels about asking for disaster relief funds in the wake of hurricane Harvey when he opposed such a bill for hurricane Sandy.

He argues that he is all for disaster relief, but that the hurricane Sandy bill became a 50 billion dollar bill, 2/3 of which were "pork spending" that had nothing to do with Sandy, which is why he opposed that bill. Is it true that the bill contained that much unrelated material? One of the YouTube comments links to an act that reads more like a 10 billion dollar increase in spending for the National Flood Insurance Program. But maybe that's not the relevant bill in this case?

Answer 1

No.

WP fact checked this and scored it 3 pinocchios

WP did reach out to Cruz's staff for clarification on what does the senator consider "pork". Here is what they were told and their analysis on it:

We sought a comment from Cruz’s staff, who understandably are busy. Update: As we suspected, Cruz’s reference to two-thirds was in reference to the slow spending of the funds, not pork, but that’s a misunderstanding of the CBO score. Spokeswoman Catherine Frazier cited $33 billion in long-term spending, including the $16 billion in Community Development Block Grants for a range of disasters. She flagged $10.9 billion in Federal Transit Administration aid, but according to CRS half of that was directed toward Sandy response and recovery efforts. Beside many of the line items described above, she also cited $122 million for Amtrak, of which about a quarter was for repairs of the Manhattan terminal and the rest for recovery and resiliency projects in the affected area.

A quick look at the Disaster relief law reveals that most funding was disaster relief related. Here is list of large ticket items mentioned in the bill that I compiled after taking a cursory look:

Fed Transportation Authority: $5,400,000,000
Community Development Fund: $3,850,000,000
Dep of Agriculture: $218,000,000
corps of engineers:  $742,000,000 (771 million total )
NOAA 290 mil
corps of engineers $3,461,000,000
Disaster Loans Program Account: $520,000,000
State and Tribal Assistance Grants: $600,000,000
Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund:  $800,000,000,
Public Transportation Emergency Relief Program: $10,900,000,000
Community Development Fund: $16,000,000,000

You can search the bill yourself for those amounts (that add up to well over 1/3 of the total $50 billion the bill allocated by the way) and read the details for yourself, but it appears that the funding is mostly disaster relief related.