You know how it is: You’re a Republican congressperson, tasked by your petty orange overlord with scrounging up $2 billion as a “down payment” on his magical, transparent, immigration-solving wall. But just when you thought you’d found the perfect spot to siphon off some precious WallBucks—i.e., the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s basically superfluous disaster relief account—dang if a massive, life-destroying hurricane doesn’t suddenly sweep in, making you look like some kind of jerk for trying to compromise America’s actual security in favor of hypothetical, immigrant-based fears.
That’s the scenario reported on by The Associated Press this week, which points out that a Republican spending bill soon to come up for consideration includes measures to cut $876 million from FEMA’s disaster relief funds (i.e., about a third of the total fund), even as Hurricane Harvey continues to wreck massive devastation on Texas. That money would instead go toward Donald Trump’s efforts to build a wall on the U.S.’s Southern border, a measure that might stop a few people from illegally immigrating into the country, but won’t do shit to keep torrential rains out of Houston.
Luckily, per the AP, the bill is likely to be defeated by the most powerful force currently operating in our country: optics. GOP leaders are expected to walk back on the cuts, searching around for a funding source that won’t be quite so politically toxic to pull money from.