Paul "No hurricane relief for you" Ryan
The confluence of soon-to-be Hurricane Isaac, the anniversary of Katrina, and the Republican National Convention is a big problem for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, not just because of the
optics of having a big, lavish red-white-and-blue party while the Gulf Coast gets hammered again. It's also because of the
recent history of Republicans to cut the agencies that deal with predicting and responding to natural disasters to the bone.
But more specifically, vice-president-nominee-to-be Paul Ryan tried to cut a new disaster aid program championed by President Obama that "budgets help for victims of hurricanes, tornadoes and floods before they occur."
It's a system that Paul Ryan, the Republican nominee-to-be for vice president, had hoped to scrap as a way to make his House GOP budget look smaller by about $10 billion a year. Politely, party elders told him no way, at least for now.
The Obama administration was the driving force behind the new disaster funding scheme and made it part of last summer's hard-fought budget pact. [...]
Months after agreeing to the new regime, Republican leaders still had to turn to procedural maneuvers to orchestrate passage of $8.8 billion in disaster money in keeping with the agreement. Ryan, the House Budget Committee's chairman, was among 66 Republicans opposing the measure.
Ryan saw that money has a handy $10 billion he could use to further cook the numbers in his sham budget, as well as an opportunity to further decimate federal budgets. If that dedicated $10 billion wasn't there, then disaster aid would have to come from cutting in other areas. Almost unbelievably, Republican leadership realized what a political loser Ryan's plan would be, and nixed it. Who's going to be the check on Paul Ryan if he becomes vice president? Romney? Fat chance.
No aid to hurricane and tornado victims. That's what Republicans are celebrating in Tampa this week.