The Trump administration’s reckless actions to reduce the cost of government may reach a new low if he follows through on the goal of phasing out the Federal Emergency Management Agency after hurricane season.
FEMA provides aid to people in areas ravaged by natural disaster, but Trump seems to think that’s not important.
He’d rather spend an estimated $134 million deploying National Guard troops and U.S. Marines to Los Angeles to “help” local police contain protests against his administration’s deportation of immigrants.
That’s $134 million flushed down the drain; local police didn’t need any help. Trump was merely trying to create a crisis that could be blamed on critics of his immigration policy. In doing so, he’s on a dangerous path toward pitting the military against U.S. residents who are exercising the basic American right of public protest.
The contrast between Trump’s austerity measures to decimate FEMA and his deployment of troops to California lies at the dark intersection of misplaced priorities — his headlong rush to deport immigrants and his ham-handed cuts to federal agencies. Both have been executed with a destructive, sweeping carelessness and lack of foresight.
Part of the problem is that his spending priorities are all out of whack, with the funding rug being pulled out from under federal services that provide aid in thousands of important ways to Americans and our country’s allies. Meanwhile, he’s spending hundreds of millions needlessly flexing the U.S.’s military muscles, seemingly to goad protesters into a fight.
The unneeded and dangerous National Guard and Marines deployment to Los Angeles cost $134 million and Trump’s chest-puffing U.S. Army parade in Washington D.C. cost an estimated $45 million.
But that’s small potatoes, compared to the cost of slashing FEMA to ribbons: $30 billion.
Trump’s answer: Let the states deal with their own disasters. What he misses is that taxpayers will pay for it one way or the other, whether it’s a federal service or a state responsibility.
Meanwhile, Americans are paying through the nose for his ill-advised military deployment in California.
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