Governor Rick Perry and the super majority of Republican lawmakers voted to cut a whopping $34 million from the Texas Forest Service and rural fire departments. The Texas GOP made this draconian cut while knowing that Texas continues to suffer from the ravages of one of the worst droughts in its history.
The Texas Forest Service faces almost $34 million in budget cuts over the next two years, roughly a third of the agency's total budget. The cuts are in both the House and Senate versions of the proposed state budget.
The Forest Service has about 200 firefighters and offers assistance grants to volunteer fire departments. Assistance grants are likely to take the biggest hit.
Volunteers -- two of whom were killed in fighting this year's fires -- make up nearly 80 percent of the state's fire-fighting force and are first responders to roughly 90 percent of wildfires in Texas.
Knowing that wild fires are the likely outcome of any drought, especially when coupled with a record breaking heat wave, Rick Perry failed to prepare a back up Plan B with which to deal with this crisis. Rick Perry's prayer rallies may have been a decent attempt to hope for the best but the cut to the Texas Forest Service budget offered no viable attempt to plan for the worst.
The fires continue to ravage large swaths of land across the state. Hundreds of homes have been burned to the ground.
The budget cut to the Texas Forest Service and rural fire departments could have been avoided if Rick Perry and the super majority of Republican lawmakers would have considered a tax increase for their sugar daddy donors and big supporters like home builder Bob Perry and John McHale to name just two.
Rick Perry refuses to increase the taxes of his supporters because both he and his sugar daddy donors see government as merely a cash cow in which all can enrich themselves and no one else.
Meanwhile, the Governor who hates big government and who is also running for President finds himself depending upon big fed FEMA to swing by Texas to deal with a problem Rick Perry chose to ignore.