Barney Frank Praises Boston's Response, Accused of Politicizing It

Former Massachusetts representative Barney Frank's comments on the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing and the importance of heavy federal spending to help the city's recovery are being questioned as too political for the moment.

"In this terrible situation, let's be very grateful that we had a well-funded, functioning government," Frank said on CNN's Starting Point. "It is very fashionable in America, and it has been for some time, to criticize government, to belittle public employees, talk about their pensions, talk about what people think is their excessive health care, here we saw government in two ways perform very well."

Frank commented more about the seamless efficiency of the various government organizations working together before adding, "No tax cut would have helped us deal with this or will help us recover. This is very expensive."

Mytheos Holt of Glenn Beck's website, The Blaze, said Frank turned the discussion of Boston's recovery "into a discussion of fiscal policy that more or less reduced the bombing itself to a political prop."

In an MSNBC interview with Thomas Roberts, Frank added that tax rates needed to increase to ensure that Massachusetts should not have to pay for the post-bombing rebuilding effort, to which Roberts also questioned whether Frank was attempting to make the attack a political matter.

"I'm talking common sense," Frank replied. "I'm saying that, if the sequester had gone through and we had not had enough money, we couldn't be able to do this. I'm making an argument about reality, and that's the only responsible response."

Watch the interview with MSNBC below.

Watch the interview with CNN below.