by Guess what else the GOP wants to cut? Tsunami monitoring!
[Via Gristmill]
by Jess Zimmerman.
If we had any evidence that Republican House members were capable of feeling shame, we’d expect them to be so red right now. Mother Jones reports that one of the items on the GOP’s budgetary chopping block is … tsunami monitoring. Last month, they voted to hack out nearly a third of the funding for the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, which (go figure) warns about tsunamis in the Pacific:
In February, the union representing the National Weather Service warned that the Republican cuts could place the residents of Hawaii in mortal danger. “People could die… It could be serious,” Barry Hirshorn, Pacific region chairman of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, told Hawaii’s Star Advertiser. The House budget includes a 28 percent cut to the National Weather Service that would result in staffing cutbacks to Hawaii’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, which monitors potential tsunamis in the Indian Ocean.
Because there’s no way a tsunami could hit the U.S. OH WAIT
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This is all part of the continuing resolution BS. Saving a couple of million here. Would they still be able to warn us about something that just cost California at least $50 million, that cost Hawaii more than $3 million, and cost $25-30 million in Oregon?
I wonder how much damage or human life might have been lost if there was not any Pacific Tsunami Warning Center? But that is all part of the discretionary budget that is about to get axed.
Makes about as much sense as standing on the beach waiting for the tsunami on the horizon to before warning people. Because that is apparently what we are heading for.
A Man With A Ph.D. 
My goodness, such hysteria and it is all the Republicans fault! Do keep in mind that Bush is no longer president. A Democrat is in the White House and Democrats control the Senate. Besides, the country is NOT broke so we don’t need to cut anything.
The country would have been a lot less broke if we simply had the same tax rates as we did under Clinton. But raising revenue is a non-starter, especially since the House is controlled by Republicans. Cutting funding is all that is being looked at, something both Democrats and Republicans are doing.