I guess this goes in either the “there he goes again” or “chutzpah” files.
Tropical Storm Karen is expected to make landfall later this week in the Gulf of Mexico. FEMA started recalling workers several days ago to prepare for the storm, and in any event, most FEMA staff never even were furloughed:
It’s unclear how many FEMA employees are being called into work. Most FEMA employees — 11,468 of the 14,729 at the agency — were declared “excepted” and were supposed to stay at work during the government shutdown, according to the DHS contingency plan.
Yet today Obama made a visit to FEMA headquarters in Washington, D.C. and issued a statement criticizing Republicans for the lack of FEMA funding. Obama demanded a vote on a full “clean” Continuing Resolution:
On Friday, however, the House passed funding for FEMA over the strenuous objections of the vast majority of House Democrats (note, there were two more Yes votes than this screenshot captured:
I have a call into Harry Reid’s office seeking his position on whether he will bring the FEMA bill to a vote, but thus far he has refused to allow individual funding bills to come to a vote, not even for NIH child cancer clinical trials.
Obama has threatened to veto the FEMA funding bill.
When the storm hits the Gulf coast, if FEMA does not have sufficient funding, there will be no one but Democrats to blame.
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