WASHINGTON – Congress is moving to slash NOAA’s forecasting programs – but a senior Oklahoma representative whose district and state relies on the safety they provide, is steering a meeting Thursday that could determine just how far those cuts will go.
U.S. Rep. Tom Cole’s Appropriations Committee will hold the Commerce-Justice-Science markup Thursday, taking up the subcommittee’s version of the budgets for those departments for amendment votes and a possible final approval.
The forecast had been calling for cuts- and the climate around climate policy is only getting hotter.
But a push by the Trump Administration to slash NOAA’s budget 27 percent to $4.5 billion appears to be already dead.
“The President proposes, but Congress decides,” Cole, (R, Moore), who is Chairman of the House Appropriations committee, told the Norman Transcript at a Norman Chamber of Commerce event last week.
The bill released Monday demonstrated growing pushback in the House to the administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency- including dissolving the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. Instead of the original $1.7 billion cut, the proposal now calls for cutting the fiscal 2026 budget by $387 million, or 6 percent.
Even that may be more than Cole is willing to agree to.
He called the cuts a White House proposal and threat- not a done deal.
“You’re going to be fine in our bill. We’re going to protect it, and we’ll be coming out in the next few weeks,” he said in regards to National Weather Service offices in Norman.
He assured reporters that the basic funding structure and the basic employment “stuff” is going to be okay.
“[The National Weather Center] is not going anywhere, and it’s going to be fully staffed and maintained.”
He gave peace of mind where he could, but said that Trump does control grants, and many of those grants work in other parts of the National Weather Center, such as The Cooperative Institute for Severe and High-Impact Weather Research and Operations, which remain in some jeopardy.
“The President’s budget is designed by the Office of Management and Budget, and they’re proposing a lot of stuff that they know is not going to happen, and that’s [NOAA] one of them…I’ve never seen a presidential budget that survived contact with reality, it doesn’t matter whose it is. Kind of a standing joke,” he added.
Cole’s district includes Oklahoma’s Radar Operations Center, a critical node in NOAA’s weather radar system. Recently, Cole confirmed the facility will remain open, even as other NOAA sites face potential closure.
As historic floods hit Central Texas, Cole acknowledged growing alarm over potential cuts to the Severe Storms Lab and the National Weather Service, the same agencies responsible for forecasting these warnings.
The death toll as a result of the Texas floods along the Guadalupe River at Camp Mystic stood at 134. But the number missing had dropped to 101 while the search continues.
Cole has offered public reassurances- but the timing remains stark. In a statement Tuesday, he called the bill “a product that reflects making needed decisions to rein in spending while safeguarding our nation and American citizens.”
Gaylord News is a reporting project of the University of Oklahoma Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication. For more stories by Gaylord News go to GaylordNews.net.
