The House will take up an emergency spending bill in the next Congress to help pay for damage caused by Superstorm Sandy, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said today after New York-area lawmakers blasted Republican leaders last night when they abruptly scrapped plans for a vote on a Senate-passed aid bill.

"The speaker will make the supplemental his first priority in the new Congress," which begins tomorrow, an aide to the speaker said, noting that Boehner had shared the promise with members of the New York and New Jersey delegations.

The Senate voted 62-32 Friday in favor of the $60.4 billion bill (H.R. 1) to help with recovery from the storm that was blamed for at least 120 deaths and that destroyed or damaged more than 72,000 homes and businesses in New Jersey alone. The House Appropriations Committee then filed a pared-down $27 billion measure earlier yesterday with a plan to vote on that bill as well as an amendment to increase the aid by another $33 billion to match the Senate bill.

But late last night, Republican leaders ditched plans to vote on the bill, effectively killing the Senate measure and forcing the chamber to start from scratch on a new measure in the 113th Congress.

Lawmakers for storm-hit areas last night took to the floor in anger.

"I'm here tonight saying to myself for the first time that I'm not proud of the decision my team has made," said Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.), whose Staten Island district was pummelled by the storm. "It is the wrong decision, and I'm going to be respectful and ask that the speaker reconsider his decision, because this is not about politics, it's about human lives."

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) called the decision "absolutely inexcusable, absolutely indefensible."

This morning, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) urged the speaker to reconsider.

"Now, at best, the speaker said that Sandy's victims will need to wait until the next Congress to receive assistance," Hoyer said, speaking on the House floor. "'Wait,' they say to millions who are in pain and in distress. We should not be waiting, Mr. Speaker."

The Sandy bill may have been a casualty of bad timing. Passing the bill this Congress would have required Republican leaders to ask members to approve $60 billion in new spending just as they were clearing a bill to avert the so-called fiscal cliff that many conservatives criticized as containing too few spending cuts.

Not only will the slow-moving Senate's work be lost if Republicans wait until next Congress to vote on a Sandy measure, but Northeastern lawmakers fear the Sandy aid could get lost in the looming battle over budget cuts as the nation nears its debt ceiling deadline in March.

Republicans say they have time to work on the measure because the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster-relief fund is scheduled to stay flush until March. The flood insurance program, however, is expected to exhaust its borrowing authority early next week. The Senate bill included a $9.7 billion increase in the program's borrowing authority, as was requested by the White House.