(Photo: NOAA)

Just when you think the Republicans can't get even more out of touch, one of them red-lines the outrageous gauge in a new category. We saw that Monday when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (VA-07) said that tornado victims in Joplin, Mo., would only get emergency relief if money could be chopped from somewhere else in the federal budget. The House Appropriations followed up Tuesday by doing exactly that.

If emergency relief requires a budget offset, why not provide it by chopping some tax "incentives" from Big Oil?

Oh, yeah, I forgot. Never mind.

Where will the money needed for disaster relief come from? From America's underfunded investment in technology designed to wean the nation off fossil fuels, natch.

Rep. Robert Aderholt's (AL-04) amendment lops half-a-billion from the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program at the Department of Energy. At the same time the committee was transferring this money so that a billion dollars could be provided to people affected by floods and tornadoes, it whacked $1.07 billion from the Homeland Security appropriations bill for disaster aid and firefighter funding in fiscal 2012. If myopia could be monetized, these guys would make the Koch Brothers look like beggars.

Last month, the Center for American Progress released its Year of Living Dangerously report spotlighting the extreme weather of 2010 and the damage it caused—including "the 1,000-year flood in Nashville, Tennessee, and the 'snowmageddon' across along the East Coast—and the connection to global warming":



More than 380 people died and 1,700 were injured due to weather events in the United States. The magnitude of these events forced the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, to declare 81 disasters. For nearly 60 years the annual average was 33. Total economic damages in 2010 exceeded a whopping $6.7 billion.

Five months into 2011 and the number of dead from extreme weather events is already far more than in 2010 and rescue workers are still searching the rubble in Joplin. The clueless House Republicans, with scores of climate-change deniers in their ranks, treat the ongoing disasters as just another opportunity to ax programs that might make a difference. Meanwhile, they assure their fossil-fuel benefactors that they view "shared sacrifice" to be merely propaganda.

As Brad Johnson at the Wonkroom put it:

The deadliest twister in U.S. history since 1947 is the latest multi-billion-dollar climate disaster in this season of unprecedented death and destruction. Scientists have warned for decades that our climate system would grow deadlier as greenhouse pollution from coal and oil increases, with greater floods, heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and storms. Instead of responding to reality by mobilizing our nation to protect people from climate disasters and build a resilient, green economy, Republicans are keeping us tethered to big oil.

But they go further than that. Not only do they want to capitalize politically on the natural disasters that have befallen Americans the past few weeks, they also seem unconcerned that their budget actions will make future tragedies worse than they might otherwise be. That was proved by the cuts they delivered in HR 1 to the weather forecasting and hurricane-tracking budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

What's next on the GOP list? Communities subject to tornadoes better hope that the sirens used to alert residents that a twister is headed their way aren't operated with federal matching funds.