Reid: Hypocritical Romney-Ryan Admin Would Be Unprepared For Hurricanes

[highplainsdem]

Source: TPM

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid ripped GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan for what he described as feigning sympathy for disaster relief victims. His evidence? House Republicans' efforts last year to make disaster relief funds contingent on cutting social programs, and the party's budget which calls for deep cuts to all domestic spending and thus could put emergency management funds at risk.

"Under a Romney-Ryan administration, we would not have been prepared to respond to Hurricane Isaac," Reid said. "If Paul Ryan and his fellow House Republicans had succeeded in blocking disaster relief last fall, there would have been no aid for the victims of Isaac today. And Paul Ryan’s budget would gut disaster funding, making it much harder to get aid to our fellow Americans in their time of need."

It is the height of hypocrisy for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to make a pretense of showing sympathy for the victims of Hurricane Isaac when their policies would leave those affected by this disaster stranded and on their own.

-snip-

Read more: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/reid-hypocritical-romney-ryan-admin-would-be-unprepared

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Reid went on to call this "another example of Mitt Romney’s extreme right wing agenda."

Give 'em hell, Harry!

[highplainsdem]

1. kick

[sakabatou]

2. I like this new Harry Reid

[oldsarge54]

3. Could be Wrong

But I don't think Romney has an agenda. He has bosses. Ryan is the real mover and shaker on the ticket, and his record gives us a foretaste of what a Republican administration will do to ordinary people.

[CBHagman]

4. From Mother Jones and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorites

Here's more evidence on both the Ryan and Romney approach to domestic spending, including and especially emergency management:

[url]http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/08/paul-ryan-mitt-romney-tampa-fema[/url]

In a 2012 report on Rep. Paul Ryan's "Path to Prosperity" roadmap (which Romney has said is similar to his own), the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted that, due to the severe cuts to non-entitlement, non-defense spending, the costs for things like emergency management would have to be passed on to the states—which, with just a few exceptions, are currently in an even tighter financial bind than Washington.

"FEMA also helps states and local governments repair or replace public facilities and infrastructure, which often is not insured," the CBPP report explained. "This form of discretionary federal aid would be subject to cuts under the Ryan budget. If it were scaled back substantially, states and localities would need to bear a larger share of the costs of disaster response and recovery, or attempt to make do with less during difficult times."

The Ryan budget makes no mention of FEMA or the Department of Homeland Security of which it's a part. In fact it makes no mention of any specific cuts to non-entitlement programs. We can't say for sure, in other words, the extent to which disaster funding would be scaled back. But the overall math suggests that it would be drastic. The Ryan budget proposes reducing total non-entitlement spending from 12 percent of GDP to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2050. As my colleague Kevin Drum put it:

"Defense spending alone amounts to 4% of GDP, and it's vanishingly unlikely that this will ever fall much below 2-3% of GDP. This means that all domestic spending will decline from about 8% of GDP to 1-2% of GDP by 2050. That's prisons, border control, education, the FBI, courts, embassies, the IRS, FEMA, housing, student loans, roads, unemployment insurance, etc. etc. It's everything. Whacked by about 80% or so."

Romney's own proposed budget (which like Ryan's fails to identify specific cuts) would create much the same bind.

DUers, run the above scenario to those relatives and colleagues who buy into the Romney-Ryan ticket and see how they'd feel about, say, another Hurricane Katrina without even the delayed response. I suspect there are very few people who really understand the potential impact of cuts of the size Romney and Ryan are proposing.