Liberal Media Tries to Blame Texas Flooding Deaths on Trump Budget Cuts

The tragic flooding in Kerr County, Texas has become the latest focal point of liberals and the media who want to turn a natural disaster into a political blame game with the Trump administration as the target,

As the media covers the tragedy they can’t help but try and pin the blame for the loss of life on the “crippling” budget cuts the Trump administration made to the National Weather Service. But in reality it’s far more complex than a budget decision which while it reduced staffing didn’t have a direct effect on the disaster.

Weather is a very unpredictable beast and can turn on a dime and render forecasts useless. In the case of the Texas case there were several factors at play including the fact the campers at Camp Mystic a private Christian camp for girls were housed in cabins that were close to the Guadalupe River and quickly became a death trap as the rising waters reached 26 inches which also expanded the width of the river carrying anything its path downriver.  The camp which has been in operation since 1926 had little reason to believe that the campers were in immediate danger and unfortunately the NWS warnings came at a time when most campers were asleep, making them helpless targets for the rapidly rising water.

As Politico reported, Kerr County officials considered building an early warning system after a major flood in 2017 but decided against it due to the cost and their inability to win a grant to help cover the cost.

There is also the belief by local officials that disasters of this size and scope won’t occur in their area.

“We had no reason to believe that this was gonna be any, anything like what’s happened here. None whatsoever,” Judge Rob Kelly, the county’s top elected official, told CBS News.

Yet despite the fact that there are multiple reports of local officials passing up the opportunity to improve flood warning systems the ire is pointed at the Trump administration.

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who never misses an opportunity to criticize the Trump administration, has urged the Commerce Department’s inspector general to investigate whether staffing shortages contributed to the “catastrophic loss of life and property” during the flooding.

The loss of life and property is a tragedy of immense proportions. But this is not a political event. These types of disasters unfortunately occur on a regular basis all over our country, and in this case the loss of life was exacerbated by occurring on the July 4^th weekend when the camp was full and other campers were out in force along the river. An early warning system might have helped in this case, but there is no way of knowing since local officials passed on building one.