"A hand conservatives are trying to sever, when they're not busy ceremoniously shaking it"

[Squigglenob]

Another disaster: Conservatives' attack on FEMA
By Sally Kohn, Special to CNN
August 29, 2011 6:28 p.m. EDT

Three months ago, Republicans in the House of Representatives tried to slash 2012 spending for the Federal Emergency Management Agency by 55% compared with 2011 spending levels, 70% compared with the 2010 budget. Thankfully, Senate Democrats avoided the most extreme cuts to FEMA. But since then, the United States has been pelted by several major disasters and FEMA is almost out of money.

Nonetheless, Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia -- whose own district was the much-damaged epicenter of a severe earthquake last week -- said he would not increase FEMA's funding until spending is cut elsewhere.

We shouldn't be surprised. Republicans also said they wouldn't do anything to help the economy and the middle class unless spending was cut from the very poor and elderly: proposing cuts to food stamps and Medicare. It's as if millions of Americans are drowning while Republicans stand on the shore, hoarding life preservers by the armfuls. You can have one in a natural disaster or get one later if you're old or unemployed -- but you can't have both.

Of course, many conservatives want to get rid of life preservers altogether. This weekend, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul made waves by saying FEMA should be destroyed. In its policy manifesto for members of Congress, the libertarian Cato Institute urged that FEMA "should be abolished," saying that "by using taxpayer dollars to provide disaster relief and subsidized insurance, FEMA itself encourages Americans to build in disaster-prone areas and makes the rest of us pick up the tab for those risky decisions." Indeed, when the small town of Mineral, Virginia, built itself over a fault line in 1890, it should have foreseen last week's earthquake. And don't even get me started on New York City brazenly popping up in the path of a hurricane.
Conservatives hate FEMA precisely because it...

Read rest of link here: http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/08/29/kohn.conservatives.fema/index.html