Trump’s words at odds with budget

President Donald Trump’s largely upbeat reassurances about a speedy recovery from Hurricane Harvey stood in contrast to the more-measured assessments coming from emergency management officials. There’s a long, difficult road ahead in recovering from a storm whose flooding has displaced tens of thousands, those officials have cautioned.

And the president’s vow of swift action on billions of dollars in disaster aid is at odds with his proposed budget, which would eliminate the program that helps Americans without flood insurance rebuild their homes and cuts grants to help states reduce the risk of flooding before disaster strikes.

Trump’s budget proposal for 2018 cuts back on Community Development Block Grants, a key program that helped the Gulf Coast rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. The same program helped New York and New Jersey come back from superstorm Sandy. Among other things, the grants help people without flood insurance coverage rebuild their homes.

In the 2017 budget, the Republican-led Congress restored some of the funds.

Though Trump’s pending budget request didn’t touch the core disaster-aid account, it proposed cutting several grant programs that help states reduce flood risks before a disaster strikes and improve outdated flood maps.

All told, Trump proposed cutting such grant programs by about $900 million.