The fires in southern Calfiornia have become the latest in what is now a long line and steady series of Katrinas and Walter Reeds, that is, a federal program that was deliberately underfunded and its effectiveness seriously...and disastrously...undermined.

An excellent item in The Huffington Post by Michael Roston is the best summary yet. Not only did GAO warn last that the program was being mismanaged and poorly budgeted, but even OMB, which is supposed to protect the president's behind on budget issues and has been pushing spending reductions, said it had no confidence in the low numbers the U.S. Forest Service, Department of Agriculture, and other firefighting agencies were using. Roston also quotes Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) from a hearing held just last June saying that the White House was seriously underbudgeting the Forest Service and that its ability to deal with fires was being seriously damaged.

"The Administration's budgets indicate that it believes that containing wildfire costs must come at the expense of preparedness," argued Bingaman, chairman of the Senate energy committee. "Its fiscal year 2008 budget proposes a nearly $90 million cut in the preparedness account. But starving the preparedness, wildfire suppression, and other Forest Service programs is not an effective or efficient strategy to contain those costs."

Walter Reed, Katrina, the FDA, the CDC, passports, Blackwate, and now the Forest Service all show what the Bush Administration's budget strategy has been: cut like hell and hope that nothing bad happens before January 20, 2009, that is, the day the next president takes the oath of office.

This almost certainly means two things: that more federal disasters should be expected and that federal spending will be increasing dramatically in the years ahead regardless of who is elected president and which party has what size majority in the House and Senate.