Posted on 01/29/2006 6:38:07 AM PST by Uncle Sham
Out of touch with our reality
Our Views
By OPINION PAGE STAFF
Published: Jan 29, 2006
Mr. President, we’re grateful for every dollar of aid we get, from private or public sources. But your statement of Thursday is simply out of touch with reality in Louisiana today.
“I want to remind the people in that part of the world, $85 billion is a lot.”
In the abstract, sure. It’s a lot of money. But as a senatorial inspection group found the other day, there has not been anywhere near $85 billion worth of progress.
For one thing, that money isn’t free money. Almost all of it is spent in accordance with a federal law called the Stafford Act. It has proved woefully inadequate in dealing with a disaster of the magnitude of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. A great deal of the money appropriated hasn’t been spent — and because of Stafford Act restrictions it might never be spent on the things that Louisiana needs to recover from this catastrophe.
Mr. President, we’re still reeling in Louisiana from your announced opposition to the key Louisiana proposal to rebuild devastated areas in southwest Louisiana and metropolitan New Orleans. This is a bipartisan and innovative plan, the Louisiana Recovery Corp. fashioned by U.S. Rep. Richard Baker, R-Baton Rouge.
We’ve not heard one good reason from your people why you’d be against it, although there seems some concern about its cost. That’s capped at $30 billion, with some payback to the Treasury later on if appreciated land is redeveloped.
You ought to reconsider that position, but if you don’t back the Baker bill, where’s the money to rebuild the devastated areas? Is it in that $85 billion total you’re so impressed with? The law will prevent almost all of that from going to the kind of rebuilding that is needed in an unprecedented catastrophe. The law is just not designed for Katrina and Rita.
A lot of money is going to pay a huge federal bureaucratic army that is trying to pound the square pegs of Louisiana needs through the round holes of the Stafford Act.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has done some important work in relief, but even that money comes with strings: The state of Louisiana is estimated to be on the hook for matching funds to the tune of well more than $1 billion, maybe as much as $4 billion. We don’t have that kind of money lying around.
We’re not sure the unemployed of the devastated parishes have the same appreciation you do for how much money has been sent to Louisiana so far. They and many others might see the end of their unemployment checks soon.
Forget any other priority. Using every discretionary dollar available to the state for homeowner aid, it’s a $6 billion Band-Aid that isn’t going to heal a $40 billion-plus wound.
That’s the opinion of Republicans and Democrats down here, conservatives and liberals.
Reconstructing whole communities is beyond the scope of that $85 billion, even if federal law allowed the money to be spent on what needs to be done.
Even if we managed to clear all the rubble with the Stafford Act funds, what happens to that devastated property? Who clears the title and assembles land for redevelopment? Who makes sure that the development plans conform to the community’s desires? Who will make sure that natives of the devastated regions will have a financially reasonable chance of returning to their neighborhoods? Most of us can’t wait months and years with house notes or commercial bank loans on homes and businesses we can’t use. The Baker bill envisions a quasi-public corporation that would have obligations not only to the taxpayer but to the ordinary citizens of Louisiana. They’re the ones who will be left helpless and bankrupt if the Baker bill isn’t passed.
Otherwise, properties will go to the banks, which don’t want them and can’t sell them. Some speculators might buy land up and hold it for some years. We can assure you that one thing they won’t do is develop affordable housing on that land. That’s one of the missions of the Baker bill, but it’s nobody’s mission absent that mechanism.
If there’s desirable land under the wreckage, we’ll see expensive homes and condos for outsiders, a vacation home Mecca that people once from New Orleans can visit and show, at a security-guard-safe distance, to their grandchildren born in Dallas and Atlanta. You’ll just see vacant lots in St. Bernard Parish.
We’ll have a heck of a lot of devastation and long-term blight to show for the $85 billion, Mr. President, if you don’t change your mind and back Louisiana’s comprehensive redevelopment plan envisioned in the Baker bill.
We’re angry at your position on this issue, Mr. President, and the patronizing tone of your ill-informed view of the Stafford Act money as some kind of Louisiana trust fund. But mostly, we’re sorry that the one official who represents the whole nation appears to have turned his back on a meaningful federal role in rebuilding our state. Louisiana isn’t going to make it with today’s deal, Mr. President. You’ve got to do better than this.
Avoid the truth if you must.
In the abstract, sure. It’s a lot of money. But as a senatorial inspection group found the other day, there has not been anywhere near $85 billion worth of progress."
Two comments:
1. I'll settle for .001% of $85 billion, personally.
2. In many countries, the government would fix the roads, the schools, and the hospitals....and that's all. I suspect that the total wouldn't nearly approach $85 billion.
Next time you post, get the facts. At least take the time to do that.
The Mississippi Gulf Coast is absolutely destroyed, and all we ever, ever hear about is New Orleans.
How did you know that the Mississippi gulf coast was absolutely destroyed?
For the record, the state did get hit twice by two major hurricanes in three weeks time. What Katrina missed in Louisiana, Rita destroyed. The Louisiana coast is also gone.
We hear none of this continued whining out of ANYBODY in Mississippi or further west on the Louisiana Coast.
Knowing how corrupt New Orleans' officials have always been, it's difficult for some of the rest of us out here to sympathize with this pity party.
This plan has been in place for over three months now. Bush saying Louisiana doesn't have a plan is a lie. This plan is a loan, not a federal gimme program. It sets up an agency outside the confines of state government, and local governments to help homeowners get out from under their present mortgages. It buys their property at 60% of pre-katrina levels, then does what it needs to do to attract reinvestors interested in developing the property. The reinvestors are ultimately the ones who repay this original loan. Check the other threads of today for more details. In short, it is a loan program that will be repaid.
I thought I read this morning that Ray Nagin also has a plan, coming out this week.
From what I read about Baker's plan, nobody in Congress supports it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1567503/posts?page=16#16
I wasn't there. Don't know. It was a different time. Might be worth researching as it is constantly mentioned. Are you going to research it for us and let us know?
Well, because my family on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi lost everything they had, and I saw it with my own eyes. That's all.
Jessica, I wish you were doing better over there on the Mississippi coast. It's one of my favorite places. Please tell your fellow freepers what the truth is for everyone's benefit. I'm talking about those know-nothings who keep pointing to the Mississippi victims as though everyone is doing just dandy with Haley Barbour in charge. I know better, but they'd believe you if you explain it to them.
Things will get better. God bless you and good luck.
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