Eric Bolling is working hard to replace Glenn Beck on Fox News as the resident right-wing lunatic, the guy whose incoherence is his chief charm as far as the Fox audience is concerned. He started out being a talking head on their stock shows on Fox's fake business-news wing, and now he has wormed his way onto the main news channel, even guest hosting Fox & Friends. Roger Ailes pays good money to those who spew hatred and nonsense in rapid-fire fashion.
Bolling has always been one of these federal spending deficit hawks so I was shocked when he said that FEMA should hand over the rescue money to New Jersey quickly. Isn't that always the case? A wingnut who hates the federal government except when they need it. F&F discusses President Obama's trip to New Jersey and Eric Bolling reveals what a hypocrite he really is.
BOLLING: I'm trying to figure out why, I get it, he wants to get there, he wants to see the damage, but please just come, sign the check, tell FEMA to sign over all the money that they need to sign over. I think they already done it. Chris Christie, the other day, yesterday was saying, 'We've gotten access to the funds we're going to need,' so I'm not really sure what touring the sites...
Steve Doocy explained why Obama was there to this dimwitted light bulb, but listen how cavalierly he discusses the need for federal monies to help a state in a dire emergency. Now, if it were a different Governor than Christie -- particularly if it were a Democrat -- I bet Bolling would be screaming that a crony got preferential treatment from Obama and was paid off by the White House. Next he'd call for Congress to enact spending cuts to offset the FEMA money.
Speaking of FEMA's budget, in 2011 the GOP-controlled House Appropriations Committee proposed cutting FEMA's budget by $87 million. In 2012 they proposed an additional $182 million in cuts. Mother Jones reported in August that Paul Ryan's much-talked about budget proposal, while not making specific mention of FEMA, calls for cuts in discretionary spending that would necessarily scale back federal disaster relief budgets drastically.
And who can forget the government-shutdown fiasco of 2011 which centered, in part, on Republican demands (led by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA)) that spending on disaster relief be offset by spending cuts elsewhere?
