The White House has unfurled its brand-new $2.77 trillion budget, and I can’t help but feel a little disappointed. This ghastly amount of money is proof, as if we needed it, that we are indeed the richest country in the world. Let me see if I can get all those zeroes right: $2,770,000,000,000. Ten zeroes. Amazing.
But what amazes me most is that, with a budget of that astronomical sum, there is still posturing and moaning in Washington over the cost of the Hurricane Katrina cleanup. $2.7 trillion to spend and Congress is doing the “Let me see what I have in this empty pocket . . . sorry, nothing!” routine. That is, when they bother to stoop to the subject at all.
In his hour-long 2005 State of the Union address, President Bush devoted 151 words to the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast. He used up most of that paltry sum boasting that $85 billion has already been authorized. What he didn’t say was that most of that money is going to projects the government is required by law to pay for. For example: $1 billion will go to repair the I-10 span over Lake Pontchartrain. Great, but that road was federal property to start with. Money to fix your own structures does not constitute hurricane relief.
Also included in that figure is the billions (final figure not arrived at yet) paid to people like me for settlement of insurance claims. The national flood insurance program is funded by the U.S. Treasury, and so the White House adds these payments into its calculation of the “relief” package. This is about as fair as calling Social Security checks welfare. Those of us who had flood insurance paid premiums into the system for years (just as retirees have paid into the S.S. system). We signed the flood insurance contract and paid our money fair and square. The feds may not like it, but that money belongs to insurance policy holders. It is ridiculous for the federal government to call such insurance payments hurricane relief.
During the State of the Union speech, a television reporter remarked that “9/11 is seared on the President consciousness.” Well, Hurricane Katrina is seared into my consciousness. Just this week I talked to a patient and his wife whose 2 year-old son almost drowned in the storm. They were stranded at home because their one car broke down, lost everything they owned in the flood and are now living in a trailer in Mississippi. Both parents work, each driving 3 hours a day from Mississippi to New Orleans to work. These are good people, not the welfare addicts conservatives like to talk about, but they need help getting their lives back in order.
After 9/11, no one asked how much it would cost to put things back together. We spent all the money we needed to and then went to war in Afghanistan to make sure it didn’t happen again. Meanwhile, with Katrina, politicians and pundits started wringing their hands over the cost of recovery within days of the storm. Who is going to war for the Gulf Coast?
Last week, the President said he was opposed to passage of the Baker bill, a homeowner’s assistance program designed to rehabilitate decimated neighborhoods. The White House claims it is too expensive. It will cost about $30 billion. This comes from a government that spends $7.6 billion a day, year round. If Congress trimmed its overall budget by 2% and diverted the proceeds to the Gulf Coast, the Baker bill would be paid for 2 times over.
A month before Katrina hit, Louisiana passed its state budget, which was for $19 billion. The federal government spends more than that in 3 days. Thus, it should be no surprise to anyone that much of the financial heavy lifting has to come from Washington. Like every American citizen, Gulf South residents pay far more in federal taxes than state and local taxes. Not that our local governments are the very image of efficiency. But it is natural for anyone (such as myself) who has honestly paid thousands into the Federal Treasury to expect Uncle Sam to step up in a time of great need. On April 15 I am counted as a citizen, and charged dearly for it. What about the other 364 days?
Many people have expressed concerns about local political corruption. This would be funny if so many lives weren’t at stake. Washington chomps through $7.6 billion of your money a day, borrows $400 billion a year, and employs more people than the entire population of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast put together and they are worried about how we spend money. With a $19 billion budget, Louisiana politicians couldn’t steal Washington quantities of money in their wildest dreams.
This is their excuse for doing nothing. The entire public health system in New Orleans is shut down, a system that served 250,000 patients a year, and as of today the feds have not put up a single penny to help revive it. Two medical schools could close, and hundreds of doctors and nurses in training wait in limbo, their education in jeopardy while Washington pauses over concerns about corruption and competency. They do not pause out of concern. They pause out of indifference.
It is not as if Louisiana and Mississippi would never pay America back. Once the economy down here is set back on its feet, it would begin to generate federal tax revenue again. In the long run, New Orleans is capable of creating enough wealth to at least significantly offset the cost of recovery. Louisiana and Mississippi are relatively poor, but they nonetheless offer employment opportunities for hundreds of thousands of Americans and are the source of a rich and interesting culture not found anywhere else on Earth.
America has always had a fondness for the new and a distaste for the old. But there is something unprecedented about throwing an entire city away. Yes, New Orleans is below sea level. Yes, the Gulf Coast is very vulnerable to hurricanes. But Louisiana is home to 40% of America’s salt water marsh. It has more alligators than Florida has and 353 species of birds. It produces the largest seafood catch in America after Alaska. To let all of that go and sink into the ocean given the extreme wealth and technology of this nation is a defeatist attitude I have never associated with America. We have thousands of troops who are dying to bring our political system to the Middle East. At the same time we are prepared to let a region of our homeland crumble and fall away from neglect. God bless America.
The numbers 9 and 6 explain the lack of urgency. 9 and 6 are the number of electoral votes of Louisiana and Mississippi, respectively. Two states that lack the clout of Florida or Pennsylvania in presidential elections and thus can be safely ignored for strategic purposes.
I am tired of hearing that there is no money to be had. $2.77 trillion and no one can find another $50 billion or so to make reconstruction really take off. We have found $240 billion so far to fund a war in Iraq. We are told this money is necessary to bring freedom to the Middle East. Who asks if this money is well spent? Why is it more important to have freedom in Iraq than to find permanent shelter for the 100,000 Americans who are still without a place to live?
I saw a patient last week, a 70 year-old man with diabetes and a history of stroke who is living in a tent in his own front yard without water or electricity. FEMA delivered a trailer a month ago, and it sits in the back yard behind his house unused because no one has bothered to hook it up its electricity. He is on the phone every day pleading with FEMA officials to come by and hook the power up so he can move in. (FEMA insists on doing its own utility hookups.) A FEMA trailer costs $15,000, and it sits in his yard, empty. That is your tax money, folks!
Nothing proves the wasteful indifference of Washington like the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO). In 1965, this 76 mile-long shipping channel was dredged through some of the most pristine wetlands in America to give oceangoing vessels a more direct path to the Port of New Orleans. The MRGO costs $22 million a year to keep properly dredged for deepwater vessels, and this dredging process has been hugely destructive. The deep channel is very slow flowing, and thus tides from the Gulf daily carry saltwater inland into fresh water swamps. This process, called saltwater intrusion, has resulted in the complete erosion and loss of 27,000 acres of wetlands and the death of an additional 38,000 acres of bald cypress swamp. Over the 41 years of its operation, the channel itself has gradually eaten away at its own banks, widening from 650 feet at the time of its opening to over 2,000 feet today.
When Katrina hit, MRGO served as a huge funnel, channeling the hurricane’s 25 foot storm surge directly into my community. I lost my home because the MRGO retention levee that was supposed to protect me and the other 68,500 residents of St. Bernard Parish from rising water broke in 20 places.
MRGO was authorized and built by Congress. It was built against the objections of many residents of my old community, and the opposition increased as the years passed and the environmental damage of this channel continued to increase. In fact, in 1958, 7 years before MRGO opened, the St. Bernard Police Jury passed a resolution opposing its construction, arguing that the MRGO would destroy wetlands that serve to buffer St. Bernard from storm surges:
During the times of hurricane conditions the existence of the channel will be an enormous danger to the heavily populated areas of the parish.
But Congress continued to authorize MRGO maintenance despite the real danger it presented to the citizens of St. Bernard Parish. By 2005, MRGO was only being used by 226 ships a year, or less than one ship a day. Still it was kept in operation. Even after Katrina, despite the horrible damage it caused, Congress has still deferred the decision to close MRGO once and for all. The government is reluctant to close it now because no one wants to admit to the magnitude of the mistake that was made. And anyway, no one will lose his job for doing nothing. We only have 9 electoral votes, remember?
A lot of the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina was the fault of federal government neglect. MR GO helped render 68,500 Americans homeless. Outside of New Orleans, no one knows this.
It is not that I think New Orleanians should have no role in their recovery. Obviously we have to take the lead in reconstruction. But the Gulf South is America, and as someone who has lived there, I can testify that it is an America much more valuable than most people realize. It is an America that has suffered from neglect and the ignorance of citizens who have never really seen the place or understood what happened when Katrina hit. The same government that blames us for our problems has never owned up to its contribution to this terrible disaster.
So perhaps you can see why I find a $2.77 trillion budget hard to swallow. I have to pay taxes to support all that spending, even as the government does absolutely nothing to bring my old city back. But, hey, when it comes to the people in New Orleans, the federal government taketh and the federal government taketh away some more.
Two author's notes: First, the above photo was taken on Sept. 30 by me. The house is one block from my own. Second, I apologize for the length of this post, but I had a few things I needed to get off my chest.