White House Cuts 4,000 Firefighting Jobs As Trump Battles Firefighters And California
Written by 991KBU on May 29, 2019
Getting back to the Malibu budget … eight million dollars in city money was spent last winter on the Woolsey Fire and the subsequent flooding.
But 6 million of that is supposed to be reimbursed by FEMA .. the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
That money is now held up in Congress … along with flood relief for Midwestern farmers … Hurricane relief for Florida and Georgia … and they continued relief package for the devastated people in Puerto Rico.
There has been agreement reached on that by the president …. House Democrats and Senate Republicans.
But the funding package has been held up in the US House of Representatives by a handful of tea party conservatives… who are bucking even congressional Republican leaders.
Meanwhile … in a little-noticed move on the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend … President Donald Trump cut over a thousand federal firefighting jobs . this summer …
The president also ended a federal program that hires 3 thousand young people for jobs in wildfire fighting …
At the same time … he is chopping wildfire reimbursements that California officials say are owed from last year.
The federal firefighting cuts will affect the US Forest Service … Bureau of Land Management and other federal agencies that together control 60% of the forested land in California.
The State of California pays for fire protection on a lot of federal land … think the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
But that money is not being reimbursed to the state … under the president’s order.
The White House action came two days after President Trump used his Twitter account to rip it into into leaders of the largest firefighters union in the country … after it endorsed Joe Biden in the Democratic primary.
Tweeted the president … and we quote …
“I’ve done more for Firefighters than this dues sucking union will ever do!”
The International Association of Fire Fighters endorsed Biden a week ago…. the first major labor union to endorse him.
