Can Trump deliver to help wet Texas?

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s hiring and budget plans are raising questions about whether he can deliver the “better-than-ever” recovery he’s promised after Hurricane Harvey devastated a swathe of the US Gulf Coast.

Trump has proposed vast budget cuts and leaving some leadership positions unfilled at agencies involved in disaster management. His Republican allies on Capitol Hill proposed spending some of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (Fema) disaster money to build a US-Mexico border wall.

But in the week since Harvey dumped a record rain blamed for deadly flooding, experts see some bright spots. Among them: Trump’s support for Fema’s co-ordination efforts and its administrator, Brock Long, a veteran of emergency management. The administration is preparing an emergency request for Congress for an initial $5.9 billion (R77bn) to replenish government reserves for relief aid. And that’s likely to be followed by supplemental requests for as much federal cash as needed for a rebuilding and recovery expected to last years.

But much of Fema’s widely-praised response is the product of laws and procedures that grew under Trump’s predecessors after the government’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

As comforter-in-chief this week in Texas, Trump signalled concern for the victims – and an understanding of the potential for a smooth recovery to help steady his turbulent administration. He showered praise on the responders, and Long in particular, even as he warned “the world is watching”.

“We want to do it better than ever before. We want to be looked at five years, 10 years from now, as this is the way to do it,” Trump said of the effort. – ANA-AP