When a teenager gets into a car accident, do we ask for a form of payment before firefighters pull them out of a burning car?
You guys are all starting to sound like liberals. You putting money before human life. If public funds have a purpose at all, it’s for search, rescue, defense, and emergency services.
You want to cry about wasting taxpayers money, there are plenty of other places to cry about that. PLENTY! Instead you whine about rescue money for a stranded teenager in the middle of the ocean?
The southern Indian ocean in wintertime (that hemisphere) is NOT the same as a teenager driving a car within 20 miles of home. There is no comparison, nor can this be compared as such because the parents financed this endeavour and sought publicity for it and then sent their albeit eager teenager into seas that most navies avoid if at all possible. She is so far outside sealanes that there are no ships within a day’s full steam sail of her. That isn’t the same as a wreck on a date on Friday night. 16 year olds have learners driver permits.