WASHINGTON -- Thursday night's massive earthquake in Japan and the resulting tsunami warnings that have alarmed U.S. coasts, seem likely to ignite a debate over a previously little-discussed subsection of the spending bills currently being debated in Congress.
The House full-year continuing resolution, which has not passed the Senate, would indeed make steep cuts to several programs and functions that would serve in a response to natural disasters (not just tsunamis) home and abroad. According to Sobien, the bill cuts $126 million from the budget of the NWS. Since, however, the cuts are being enacted over a six-month period (the length of the continuing resolution) as opposed to over the course of a full year, the effect would be roughly double.
As for NOAA, the House GOP cuts are even deeper. The House spending bill is roughly $450 million below the president's 2011 budget requests. The Senate Democratic bill would be $110 million below that request. The White House-allied Center for American Progress, argued that the House spending bill would actually cut $1.2 billion from the president's budget requests, likely by taking into account that the bill does not provide NOAA the funding increase requested for the Joint Polar Satellite System.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/11/tsunami-relief-gop-budget-cuts_n_834479.html
2 comments:
If the GOP had its way, it would welcome a bicoastal tsunami that would wash all those liberals and socialists out to sea.
Big corporations would sell us all tsunami insurance then use the fine print not to pay off. Then we'd be forced to rebuild like New Orleans. See how wonderfully that's going.
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