In the aftermath of the flooding that hammered Texas’ Hill Country, Sen. Maria Cantwell on Sunday urged the White House to make critical investments in the country’s weather forecasting and alerts system.
But unlike other top Democrats, the ranking Democrat on the Senate committee overseeing the National Weather Service isn’t pointing fingers at the Trump administration’s response.
“What the real question is, is what can we do to improve the weather forecasting of this nation?” Cantwell (D-Wash.) told CBS’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.” “To use science, to use better assets, to really do a once-in-a-lifetime investment to upgrade the system so that we could have given people in Kerrville more time, more warning and the same for tornadoes and hurricanes and fires.”
Cantwell told Brennan she plans on sending a letter to President Donald Trump detailing five recommendations, including several supported by key Republican colleagues, to build out a more sustainable early warning system.
But the Trump administration has seemed likely to go the other way. An April memo from the Office of Management and Budget signaled White House plans to break up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which houses NWS, as part of its push to slash government spending.
“This is a national responsibility,” Cantwell said. “And I think of, you know, if you want your snow shoveled, yeah, you want the mayor to show up, but if you want accurate weather information, it’s not community to community. It’s a national system, and we share that with the local people and help them best respond.”
The flooding has killed at least 120 people in Texas. And 173 more were still listed as missing as of Sunday morning.
Top Democrats — including Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — have indicated that staffing cuts at the NWS could have worsened the preparedness for the floods. And Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has taken heat for a measure requiring her sign-off on FEMA expenditures over $100,000 that experts say has slowed down recovery efforts.
Cantwell said she’d support a Government Accountability Office review into the federal response. But she appeared much more focused on moving on rather than looking back.
“What we want is to make sure that we understand what happened, but doing blame gaming isn’t going to bring people back,” she told Brennan.
