Broken Promises to a Broken Gulf

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President Bush has reneged on his promises to Katrina’s victims. Shamefully, the president has chosen the interests of bureaucracy over those of American towns on the brink of failure.

Over a year and a half later, there are 64,000 people still sleeping in trailers in Louisiana and far too many communities without schools, hospitals and other basics. These are unacceptable failures. At least part of the problem is a law that requires states to contribute 10 percent of the cost of most federally financed reconstruction projects. Mr. Bush waived that requirement after the Sept. 11 attacks (as his father did after Hurricanes Andrew and Iniki) but he refuses to do so for the Gulf Coast.

A law written to deal with isolated tornadoes does not fit the total devastation of an entire region, and particularly the drowning of a major city like New Orleans. But municipalities are still being asked to pony up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, even when they are broke.

Louisiana has tried to ease the problem by covering the local share out of a separate pot of money (from Housing and Urban Development block grants) only to find the conflicting demands of the two federal bureaucracies nearly insurmountable.

In Louisiana, this bureaucratic nightmare has left the financing for roughly 20,000 projects in limbo, while generating 2.6 million documents and the attendant overhead costs. Recognizing the urgency of the situation, both the House and the Senate have passed versions of the cost-sharing waiver, but they are attached to the spending bill for Iraq, which President Bush has vowed to veto if it includes a deadline for a troop withdrawal. The administration also argues that Congress has already committed over $110 billion for Gulf Coast relief and reconstruction.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/opinion/17tue2.html?_r=1&oref=slogin