Congress blocked funding to to thin brush, may have worsened California wildfire

I note that Reuters doesn't mention that it is the Republicans in Congress that blocked the funding for these projects.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_09/pouring_flammable_tea_on_the_r046682.php

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/01/usa-fire-yosemite-brush-idUSL2N0GX02220130901

By Jonathan Kaminsky
Sun Sep 1, 2013

(Reuters) - A cluster of controlled fire and tree-thinning projects approved by forestry officials but never funded might have slowed the progress of the massive Rim Fire in California, a wide range of critics said this weekend.
The massive blaze at the edge of Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada mountains has scorched an area larger than many U.S. cities - with some of that land in the very location pinpointed by the U.S. Forest service for eight projects aimed at clearing and burning brush and small trees that help fuel wildfire.

The projects, which were approved by the U.S. Forest Service but never funded by Congress, would have thinned the woods in about 25 square miles (65 square km) in the Groveland District of the Stanislaus National Forest, much of which was incinerated by the Rim Fire.

About 9,000 acres (3,642 hectares) were suitable to be deliberately burned as fire prevention buffer zones in 2012, the Forest Service said in a document provided to Reuters.

But reductions in funding for fire prevention efforts by Congress in recent years coupled with stringent air quality standards that limit the timeframe for such burns have hampered efforts to carry them out on a larger scale.