Obama Bureaucrats Are Fueling Wildfires

Colorado Springs— The smell of singed air here is inescapable. Less than 50 miles west of my neighborhood, the latest wildfire has spread across 1,100 acres. It’s the fifth active blaze to erupt in our state over the past month. But ashes aren’t all that’s smoldering.

The Obama administration’s neglect of the federal government’s aerial-tanker fleet raises acrid questions about its core public-safety priorities. Bipartisan complaints goaded the White House into signing a Band-Aid fix last week. But it smacks more of election-year gesture politics: too little, too late, too fake.

Ten years ago, the feds had a fleet of 44 firefighting planes. Today, the number is down to nine for the entire country. Last summer, Obama’s National Forest Service canceled a key federal contract with Sacramento-based Aero Union just as last season’s wildfires were raging. Aero Union had supplied eight vital air tankers to Washington’s dwindling fleet of aerial firefighters. Two weeks later, the company closed down and 60 employees lost their jobs. Aero Union had been a leader in the business for a half-century.

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