Yea, I know. What in the world does my trip to my home in Florida and the Florida weather, in March, have to do with President Donald Trump? Having a home in Florida makes Donald Trump and his budget, recently sent to Congress, even more personal to me than it already was.
So when I got here, I was greeted with a chorus of, “Have you heard about the weather?” Well, no. I guess I hadn’t been paying attention. Seems there was something called a subtropical low sitting off the coast of South Carolina that could give us some trouble on my island in the sun. A little bit of a storm if it came our way. I’m, frankly, still not clear if it is coming our way or not, but the weather in Ft. Myers has been awfully hot and the Gulf is awfully warm. My answer was that tropical storms/hurricanes don’t happen in March, do they? The answer is, “Not usually.”
This wouldn’t be a tropical storm, but a subtropical storm, something I’m not very well versed in as a newcomer to this Land of the Tropics, but it would involve rain, wind, and even a storm surge. The words “storm surge” are not something a person living near the coast ever wants to hear.
This all makes me furious with our President. Being a finance person at heart (well, with part of my heart), I have studied every line of Trump’s budget. As you probably know, he wants to slash the budgets of many federal agencies and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is one of them. The agency that studies and predicts hurricanes and other tropical weather systems among many other things.
He wants to DO WHAT??? Cut its budget? You have got to be kidding me. Those were some phrases I uttered, among others, when I realized how personally this particular budgetary line item affected me all of a sudden. We simply can’t let him do that……that was my first thought. My second thought was not fit for human consumption.
NOAA’s budget hasn’t been cut yet and, hopefully, those of us on the coast will be warned in the usual manner if and when it is necessary. But, what if Congress passes Trump’s “heavy on defense spending” budget with its cuts to these vital federal agencies including, but not limited to, NOAA? What, someone tell me, is there going to be left to defend?
Certainly a rhetorical question.
The Write Scribe 