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DanS
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Kickball Capital of the World
Jan 1970
time: 00:37
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This sucks! I'll vote every goddamn politician out of office who goes along with this. I'm prepared to vote often! 
quote:
Bush to Request More Aid Funding
Analysts Warn of Spending's Impact
By Jonathan Weisman and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 15, 2005; Page A01
President Bush will call tonight for an unprecedented federal commitment to rebuild New Orleans and other areas obliterated by Hurricane Katrina, putting the United States on pace to spend more in the next year on the storm's aftermath than it has over three years on the Iraq war, according to White House and congressional officials.
With the federal tab for Katrina already nearly quadruple the cost of the country's previous most expensive natural disaster cleanup, Bush plans to offer federal assistance to help flood victims find jobs, get housing and health care, and attend school, according to White House aides.
In a speech from the flood zone, Bush will commit the federal government to what many predict will become the largest reconstruction effort ever on U.S. soil.
The president will call on Washington to resist spending money unwisely, but some in his own party are already starting to recoil at a price tag expected to exceed $200 billion -- about the cost of the Iraq war and reconstruction efforts. As emergency expenditures soar -- with new commitments as high as $2 billion a day -- some budget analysts and conservative groups are warning that the Katrina spending has combined with earlier fiscal decisions in ways that will wreak havoc on the government's finances for years to come.
Bush and Republican congressional leaders, by contrast, are calculating that the U.S. economy can safely absorb a sharp spike in spending and budget deficits, and that the only way to regain public confidence after the stumbling early response to the disaster is to spend whatever it takes to rebuild the region and help Katrina's victims get back on their feet.
"I think absolutely it's going to convert the political landscape in Washington," Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) said of Katrina's impact. "We do have a social safety net in this country. Those aren't just words. Government has a role to play in people's lives."
Hours before Bush speaks, the Louisiana congressional delegation will present its tab for reconstruction and rebuilding efforts, which could put pressure on Bush to spend money in areas not currently on his agenda. In addition, aides said yesterday that nearly 2.5 million have registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for help and that Education Department officials estimate the number of displaced students to be approaching 400,000. Officials from several departments raced yesterday to complete proposals that Bush can talk about in his speech and in the days to follow.
The Education Department, for instance, is readying plans to waive No Child Left Behind requirements for some states; to provide cash assistance to school districts absorbing students; and to finance new schoolbooks, demolition and reconstruction of school buildings, and temporary trailers and new teachers for schools bursting with Katrina evacuees, Republican aides said.
The way in which the administration plans to spend money -- and not just the amount -- is raising caution flags. In a letter he plans to send to Bush today, Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said the president should scrap the administration's plan to deploy as many as 300,000 mobile homes to temporarily house people. Turner said the victims would be better served by market-rate and subsidized housing already in place in other regions of the country. A dozen Republicans also lobbied Bush to appoint a disaster czar to oversee the reconstruction and relief efforts in the South, an idea the president has, thus far, resisted.
Administration officials concede that the hurricane and its aftermath could push the budget deficit back above $400 billion next year, or about 3 percent of the country's gross domestic product, just as the tide of federal red ink that rolled over Washington during Bush's first term had begun to recede.
Since Katrina struck, Congress has already spent $62.3 billion, dwarfing the inflation-adjusted $17.8 billion that Congress spent on hurricanes Andrew, Iniki and Omar, which struck in 1992, and the $15.2 billion emergency appropriation for the Northridge, Calif., earthquake of 1994. The entire Persian Gulf War of 1991 cost less than $83 billion in today's dollars.
The libertarian Cato Institute warned yesterday of a looming "budget disaster." In meetings with GOP congressional leaders and White House aides, some Republican lawmakers have expressed alarm about the growing price tag and concern that vast sums could be wasted without proper oversight.
White House officials have told Congress that the $51.8 billion approved late last week will fund the disaster relief effort only through the first week of October, and senior congressional appropriations aides have told the White House that they need to see the next request by next week. Republicans say the next bill could exceed $50 billion.
The scale of the disaster has not even come into focus, largely because many agencies have not been allowed into the disaster zone to assess the damage, according to congressional appropriations aides, who are trying to examine the costs to the government, agency by agency.
Nearly 1,000 drinking-water and sewer systems -- 391 in Mississippi, 606 in Louisiana and one in Alabama -- remain shut down. Repairing and rebuilding such systems could cost between $3 billion and $10 billion, much of it on the tab of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Before Katrina struck, the federal highway emergency relief fund already faced a $120 million backlog of road repairs. With so many crumbled bridges and washed-out highways after the storm, the fund's deficit will now be in the billions, appropriations aides said.
The Air Force will seek as much as $4 billion to repair damaged Gulf-state facilities, a House Appropriations Committee aide said. An additional $2 billion to $4 billion will be needed to finance the mobilization of the National Guard, the evacuation of military personnel and military-family support programs. Damage to national parks, forests and wildlife refuges is estimated to approach $300 million.
Once the administration makes its request, congressional officials expect a cascade of demands from lawmakers. Farm-state members have signaled that they will seek substantial relief for midwestern grain farmers, whose shipments of grain down the Mississippi River were disrupted by Katrina. Even before the storm, parched farms in Illinois, Missouri and parts of Iowa had prompted farm-state lawmakers to seek relief.
Lawmakers from the Northeast have said they will push for $800 million or more in assistance to offset the soaring price of home heating oil. And state governments from Washington and South Dakota to West Virginia and South Carolina are expected to seek federal dollars to offset the cost of housing Katrina survivors.
The White House has declared 41 states and the District of Columbia either major disaster areas or in states of emergency, allowing federal aid to flow to any state that takes in an evacuee.
Against calls to trim spending elsewhere to accommodate the emergency, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) did little to close those floodgates when he suggested this week that the Republican-controlled Congress had already trimmed all the fat from federal spending. "My answer to those that want to offset the spending is 'Sure, bring me the offsets,' " he said. "I will be glad to do it, but no one is able to come up with any yet."
Against this tide, conservative think tanks are taking up DeLay's challenge. But their suggested spending cuts may only underscore Congress's flagging resolve.
To reach $62 billion in savings, Cato Institute analysts Chris Edwards and Stephen Slivinski have proposed cutting NASA in half, slashing energy research and subsidies just as Congress is gearing up to increase them in the face of soaring gasoline prices, cutting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' budget by $4.6 billion after its levees failed to protect New Orleans, and eliminating $4.2 billion in homeland security grants while lawmakers are debating the nation's lack of preparedness. |
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The Emperor Fabulous
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Apolyton's Resident Actor-in-Training
Aug 1999
time: 00:37
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quote:
Budget cuts delayed New Orleans flood control work By Andy Sullivan
Thu Sep 1, 7:33 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bush administration funding cuts forced federal engineers to delay improvements on the levees, floodgates and pumping stations that failed to protect New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters, agency documents showed on Thursday.
The former head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that handles the infrastructure of the nation's waterways, said the damage in New Orleans probably would have been much less extensive had flood-control efforts been fully funded over the years.
"Levees would have been higher, levees would have been bigger, there would have been other pumps put in," said Mike Parker, a former Mississippi congressman who headed the engineering agency from 2001 to 2002.
"I'm not saying it would have been totally alleviated but it would have been less than the damage that we have got now."
Eighty percent of New Orleans was under water after Katrina blew through with much of the flooding coming after two levees broke.
A May 2005 Corps memo said that funding levels for fiscal years 2005 and 2006 would not be enough to pay for new construction on the levees.
Agency officials said on Thursday in a conference call that delayed work was not related to the breakdown in the levee system and Parker told Reuters the funding problems could not be blamed on the Bush administration alone.
Parker said a project dating to 1965 remains unfinished and that any recent projects would not have been in place by the time the hurricane struck even if they had been fully funded.
"If we do stuff now it's not going to have an effect tomorrow," Parker said. "These projects are huge, they're expensive and they're not sexy."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the administration had funded flood control efforts adequately.
Tensions over funding for the New Orleans levees emerged more than a year ago when a local official asserted money had been diverted to pay for the Iraq war. In early 2002, Parker told the U.S. Congress that the war on terrorism required spending cuts elsewhere in government.
Situated below sea level, New Orleans relied on a 300-mile
network of levees, floodgates and pumps to hold back the waters of the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain.
Levees were fortified after floods in 1927 and 1965, and Congress approved another ambitious upgrade after a 1995 flood killed six people.
Since 2001, the Army Corps has requested $496 million for that project but the Bush administration only budgeted $166 million, according to figures provided by the office of Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu (news, bio, voting record).
Congress ultimately approved $250 million for the project during that time period.
Another project designed to shore up defenses along Lake Pontchartrain was similarly underfunded, as the administration budgeted $22 million of the $99 million requested by the Corps between 2001 and 2005. Congress boosted spending on that project to $42.5 million, according to Landrieu's office.
"It's clear that we didn't do everything we could to safeguard ourselves from this hurricane or from a natural disaster such as Katrina but hopefully we will learn and be more prepared next time," said Landrieu spokesman Brian Richardson.
The levee defenses had been designed to withstand a milder Category Three hurricane and simply were overwhelmed by Hurricane Katrina, said senior project manager Al Naomi.
"The design was not adequate to protect against a storm of this nature because we were not authorized to provide a Category Four or Five protection design," he said.
A study examining a possible upgrade is under way, he said.
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Drake, I'm getting tired of proving you wrong.
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Drake Tungsten
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Knee deep in alien womyn...
Oct 2001
time: 14:37
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quote:
Drake, I'm getting tired of proving you wrong. |
How can one get tired of something one's never done?
quote:
Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had already launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control. The Corps was building a huge new lock for the canal, an effort to accommodate steadily increasing barge traffic.
Except that barge traffic on the canal has been steadily decreasing.
In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.
Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana's representatives have kept bringing home the bacon.
For example, after a $194 million deepening project for the Port of Iberia flunked a Corps cost-benefit analysis, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) tucked language into an emergency Iraq spending bill ordering the agency to redo its calculations. The Corps also spends tens of millions of dollars a year dredging little-used waterways such as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, the Atchafalaya River and the Red River -- now known as the J. Bennett Johnston Waterway, in honor of the project's congressional godfather -- for barge traffic that is less than forecast. |
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...5090702462.html
Educate yourself, man...
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DinoDoc
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AECCP loves Democracy
Sep 1999
time: 23:37
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You might want to find a better source than Mike Parker. He's had an ax to grind since being tossed out on his ass. Anyway dueling articles:
quote:
Army's engineers spent millions on Louisiana projects labeled as pork
Michael Grunwald, Washington Post
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control. The Corps was building a massive new lock for the canal, an effort to accommodate steadily increasing barge traffic.
Except barge traffic on the canal has been steadily decreasing.
In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times larger.
Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana's representatives have kept bringing home the bacon.
For example, after a $194 million deepening project for the Port of Iberia flunked a Corps cost-benefit analysis, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., tucked language into an emergency Iraq spending bill ordering the agency to redo its calculations. The Corps also spends tens of millions of dollars a year dredging little-used waterways like the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, the Atchafalaya River and the Red River -- now known as the J. Bennett Johnston Waterway, in honor of the project's congressional godfather -- for barge traffic that turns out to be less than forecast.
Most controversial
The Industrial Canal lock is one of the agency's most controversial projects, sued by residents of a New Orleans low-income black neighborhood and cited by an alliance of environmentalists and taxpayer advocates as the fifth-worst current Corps boondoggle. In 1998, the Corps justified its plan to build a new lock -- rather than fix the old lock for a tiny fraction of the cost -- by predicting huge increases in barge traffic.
In fact, barge traffic on the canal had been plummeting since 1994, but the Corps left that data out of its study. And barges have continued to avoid the canal since the study was finished, even though they are visiting the port in increased numbers.
Pam Dashiell, president of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, remembers holding a protest against the lock four years ago -- right where the levee broke last week. Now she's holed up with her family in a St. Louis hotel, and her neighborhood is underwater. "Our politicians never cared half as much about protecting us as they cared about pork," she said.
Wednesday, congressional defenders of the Corps said they hoped the fallout from Hurricane Katrina would pave the way for billions of dollars of additional spending on water projects. Steve Ellis, a Corps critic with Taxpayers for Common Sense, called their push "the legislative equivalent of looting."
Louisiana's politicians have requested much more money for New Orleans hurricane protection than the Bush administration has proposed or Congress has provided. In the last budget bill, Louisiana's delegation requested $27.1 million for shoring up levees around Lake Pontchartrain, the full amount the Corps had declared as its "project capability." Bush suggested $3.9 million, and Congress agreed to spend $5.7 million.
Administration officials also scaled back a long-term project to restore Louisiana's disappearing coastal marshes, which once provided a measure of natural hurricane protection for New Orleans. They ordered the Corps to stop work on a $14 billion plan and devise a $2 billion plan instead.
Levees only so strong
But overall, the Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were only designed to protect against a Category 3 storm. Strock also has said the marsh restoration project would not have done much to diminish Katrina's storm surge, which passed east of the coastal wetlands.
"The project manager for the Great Pyramids probably put in a request for 100 million shekels and only got 50 million," said John Paul Woodley Jr., the Bush administration official overseeing the Corps. "Flood protection is always a work in progress; on any given day, if you ask whether any community has all the protection it needs, the answer is almost always: Maybe, but maybe not."
The Corps had been studying the possibility of upgrading the New Orleans levees for a higher level of protection before Katrina hit, but Woodley said that study would not have been finished for years. Still, liberal bloggers, Democratic politicians and some Republican defenders of the Corps have linked the catastrophe to the underfunding of the agency.
"We've been hollering about funding for years, but everyone would say: There goes Louisiana again, asking for more money," said former Democratic senator John Breaux. "We've had some powerful people in powerful places, but we never got what we needed." |
http://www.startribune.com/stories/125/5602732.html
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The Emperor Fabulous
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Apolyton's Resident Actor-in-Training
Aug 1999
time: 00:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
quote:
Drake, I'm getting tired of proving you wrong. |
How can one get tired of something one's never done? |
Actually, one HAS done, with your liitle blog linkie thingy that said Hurricanes frequency and power were decreasing (which they aren't).
Lets go for an older article:
quote:
In fiscal year 2006, the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is bracing for a record $71.2 million reduction in federal funding.
It would be the largest single-year funding loss ever for the New Orleans district, Corps officials said.
I've been here over 30 years and I've never seen this level of reduction, said Al Naomi, project manager for the New Orleans district. I think part of the problem is it's not so much the reduction, it's the drastic reduction in one fiscal year. It's the immediacy of the reduction that I think is the hardest thing to adapt to.
There is an economic ripple effect, too. The cuts mean major hurricane and flood protection projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now.
Money is so tight the New Orleans district, which employs 1,300 people, instituted a hiring freeze last month on all positions. The freeze is the first of its kind in about 10 years, said Marcia Demma, chief of the Corps' Programs Management Branch.
Stephen Jeselink, interim commander of the New Orleans Corps district, told employees in an internal e-mail dated May 25 that the district is experiencing financial challenges. Execution of our available funds must be dealt with through prudent districtwide management decisions. In addition to a hiring freeze, Jeselink canceled the annual Corps picnic held every June.
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From the Wiki:
quote:
From 2001 through 2005, the Bush administration battled with Congress to cut a total of approximately 67% from the budgetary requests from the Army Corps of Engineers for levee augmentation projects in the New Orleans area, but ultimately settled with Congress on a mere 50% cut in these budgetary requests |
And don't you think, perhaps, that the reason LA got more money is because it NEEDED more money? And that, just maybe, since its money was CUT, it didn't have what it NEEDED?
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shawnmmcc
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DanS - I told you so. The Neocons are not the Republican party of strong defense plus limited and balanced budgets. Instead they and the Neopuritans (those who want to pass laws imposing their moral decisions on others) have made a Devil's pact. You're just seeing it.
This is NOT Reagan's party, I listened to a recording of one his speeches recently where he stated while he felt his opponents were wrong, he knew they were just as patriotic as they were. Compare that to what comes out of Karl Rove's machine. FYI, when I vote in my local Republican primaries, first I vote on family values (that is between me and God so if you want to butt in, I'll vote against you). Next, I look for somebody who believes in balanced budgets versus simple tax-cut rhetoric. Failing that, and it just happened to me last year in a three way House Primary (we had an open seat) - I look for somebody who is willing to admit that maybe, just maybe the Bush adminstration has some misplaced priorities. The guy stating that won, and was the best I could vote on. Our district is fairly red.
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15-09-2005 09:50
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