{"id":35015,"date":"2013-05-21T15:58:07","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T14:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/oklahoma-senator-tom-coburn-demands-tornado-relief-be-offset-by-cuts-elsewhere\/35015\/"},"modified":"2013-05-21T15:58:07","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T14:58:07","slug":"oklahoma-senator-tom-coburn-demands-tornado-relief-be-offset-by-cuts-elsewhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/oklahoma-senator-tom-coburn-demands-tornado-relief-be-offset-by-cuts-elsewhere\/","title":{"rendered":"Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn Demands Tornado Relief Be Offset by Cuts Elsewhere"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn.
Photo Credit: United States Congress\/Wikimedia Commons<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

May 21, 2013<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>
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Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has consistently balked at emergency funding in the aftermath of disasters–and a powerful tornado that ripped through his home state isn\u2019t changing that. Coburn is making headlines by insisting that any aid to his state be offset by federal spending cuts elsewhere. <\/p>\n

CQ Roll Call<\/em>\u2019s Jennifer Scholtes reports<\/a> that Coburn said he would \u201cabsolutely\u201d demand the offsets. Coburn has also voted for cutting the amount of aid allocated to victims of Hurricane Sandy. A Coburn spokesman told the Huffington Post<\/em><\/a> that the Senator \u201cmakes no apologies for voting against disaster aid bills that are often poorly conceived and used to finance priorities that have little to do with disasters.\u201d <\/p>\n

Coburn\u2019s callous position was announced as the death toll and devastation in Oklahoma was coming into full view. Yesterday, a tornado tore through parts of Oklahoma City and its suburbs and flattened a hospital and two schools. The death toll currently stands at 24, with at least 240 people injured. An estimated 60 of the injured were children. <\/p>\n

One school \u201cwas reduced to a pile of twisted metal and toppled walls,\u201d the New York Times<\/em> reports. <\/a>Yahoo News!<\/em> spoke to Stuart Earnest Jr.<\/a>, who witnessed the destruction of the Plaza Towers Elementary school. \u201cAll you could hear were screams,\u201d he said. \u201cThe people screaming for help. And the people trying to help were also screaming.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cNumerous neighborhoods were completely leveled,\u201d Sgt. Gary Knight of the Oklahoma City Police Department told the Times. \u201cNeighborhoods just wiped clean.\u201d Emergency crews continued to search for survivors. <\/p>\n

President Obama has declared some Oklahoma counties to be disaster areas, which allows federal funding to be start to flow to the state. <\/p>\n

CNN reports<\/a> that more storms part of the same weather patterns could hit more states, putting 53 million at risk. \u201cTornadoes could strike the Plains, but likely not in devastated Moore, Oklahoma, where the threat of severe weather has diminished. In the bull’s-eye Tuesday are parts of north-central Texas, southeastern Oklahoma, and northern Arkansas and Louisiana, according to the National Weather Service,\u201d the news outlet reported. <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on : AlterNet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn.Photo Credit: United States Congress\/Wikimedia Commons May 21, 2013 \u00a0| Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has consistently balked at emergency funding in the aftermath of disasters–and a powerful tornado that ripped through his home state isn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-35015","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}