Harry Reid

Harry Reid

“It is the height of hypocrisy for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to make a pretense of showing sympathy for the victims of Hurricane Isaac when their policies would leave those affected by this disaster stranded and on their own,” Reid said. “If Paul Ryan and his fellow House Republicans had succeeded in blocking disaster relief last fall, there would have been no aid for the victims of Isaac today. And Paul Ryan’s budget would gut disaster funding, making it much harder to get aid to our fellow Americans in their time of need,” he added.

While Pretend-President Romney was touring Louisiana, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reminded reporters of the profound hypocrisy of that trip.All of which is perfectly true. Last year, House Republicans created yet another crisis over the budget, with emergency disaster funding as their hostage. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was the ringleader in that debacle, backed up by his loyal budget committee chair, Paul Ryan.

More to the point, Ryan's major culpability is in his efforts to gut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency and FEMA in his budgets. Even more to the point of this disaster, he tried to abolish a new fund agreed to by Congress and President Obama that is providing relief in this disaster. He was overruled by his leadership.

Ryan's House leadership was smart enough to recognize that gutting emergency funding ended up being a disaster for them and shut Ryan down. Mitt Romney (the guy who turned rising ocean levels into a joke in his acceptance speech) seems to be fine with the idea.