Obama, Biden, and Democrats in general continue to lie about sequestration–it was the Obama Administrations idea, sold to Harry Reid, pushed by the media, with the standard the world will end if we don’t do something from the same people who refuse to pass a budget that would make all of this unnecessary.
Up until now, all the chatter has been about what ti could, would, or would not do to the us military, but according to Joel Pollak at Breitbart, the cuts, detailed on pages 94 through 96 of the White House’s sequestration proposal, dig deep into FEMA and state and local emergency programs.
The White House sequestration proposal also warns: “The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s ability to respond to incidents of terrorism and other catastrophic events would be undermined.”
As Bob Woodward notes in his definitive account of the debt ceiling negotiations, such a bargain was within reach in July 2011, before President Obama destroyed it.
Obama’s proposed cuts to FEMA include the following (emphasis added):
- Flood Hazard Mapping and Risk Analysis Program – $8 million
- State and Local Emergency Programs (non-defense) – $183 million
- State and Local Emergency Programs (defense) – $5 million
- United States Fire Administration and Training – $4 million
- Salaries and Expenses (non-defense) – $75 million
- Salaries and Expenses (defense) – $7 million
- Disaster Relief – $580 million
- Emergency Food and Shelter – $10 million
- Radiological Emergency Preparedness Program – $3 million
- National Pre-disaster Mitigation Fund – $3 million
These cuts likely underestimate the total cuts proposed to disaster relief functions, since the U.S. armed forces–subject to separate cuts in Obama’s sequester proposals–frequently provide support to FEMA operations, as well as essential search and rescue services.
I wonder if this was another one of those bills we had to pass to see what was in it?
Here we have a guy who voted against waiving the Stafford Act, which he then tossed down the memory hole so he could race bait and blame white Republicans on storm relief funding. And here we have his sequestration language, from his own adviser, under cutting the same kind of funding he himself was willing to lie about to divide people by color.
Food for thought as the Northeast faces a major weather event which–if it happened next year–would occur with significantly less funding thanks to Barack Obama.
