House Republicans maintain that NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is a huge waste of money. In fact it's such a huge waste of money they're planning to force through cuts that would trim NOAA's budget by 30%.
The agency is warning the cuts will leave it effectively blind and will destroy its ability to give 5-10 days advance information of approaching hurricanes.
The $1.2bn (£730m) of cuts will force NOAA to delay replacing ageing satellites – meaning that it could go for up to 18 months without an eye in the sky at some time in the next five years.
"Whether the gap is longer than that depends on whether we get the money in the next budget," Jane Lubchenco, the head of NOAA, told an audience in Denver earlier this month.
For a country that still hasn't recovered from hurricane Katrina and has just been blasted by hurricane Irene, blinding the one agency that furnishes advance warning of major storm events is utter madness. This from a government that is still spending about $10 billion a month to wage a senseless, decadal war in Afghanistan.
Madness, Republican style.
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