SHARING KATRINA’S BURDEN

The president’s recent promise that “we will not just rebuild, we will build higher and better” along the Gulf Coast is going to cost the federal government at least $200 billion, and if the money is to come from any source but borrowing, Congress must get organized quickly. That is very unlikely for Congress as a whole. But within the Senate, the 14 who found a compromise to the filibuster nuclear option earlier this year may be able to present both a plan and a voting bloc strong enough to enforce a balanced solution.

There’s nothing wrong with using some deficit spending on reconstruction that is to last the next 50 or 75 years. Indeed, for a nation that cannot balance its federal budget under normal conditions, deficit spending to rebuild after Katrina is inevitable. Congress should avoid, however, adding the short-term emergency costs and longer term social services costs onto the debt. It has three other budget areas upon which to draw.

It could, for instance, review the billions of dollars in earmarks – commonly known as pork – that get inserted in spending bills by individual members and, while often useful and even occasionally important, they are likely less important than the recovery of the Gulf Coast. The $315 million bridge to serve 15 families on Alaska’s Gravina Island has been mentioned. Agriculture subsidies, highway bill spending that isn’t for highways, research projects that are of benefit locally and no where else should be reconsidered.

Some existing programs should be cut too – as long as the federal mandate that accompanies them is also dropped. If features of No Child Left Behind can be delayed a year, that’s a better choice than what’s being discussed in the House: A delay of Medicare’s drug benefit. But cutting across the board or just anywhere is counterproductive.

For instance, Congress shouldn’t add Medicaid spending while cutting Medicaid’s base funding; nor should it cut programs of specific benefit to the affected region. It would make no sense to reduce Housing and Urban Development’s programs in a region that will depend on them, for instance. Nor would it help the birthplace of jazz to cut the National Endowment for the Arts’ jazz-promotion programs.

Delaying or dropping more tax cuts, however, does make sense. The planned cuts were unaffordable before Katrina; they are irresponsible now. The assertion by the president that failing to continue with tax cuts – the next two are worth $20 billion a year to the wealthy – would hurt the economy ignores the obvious question: For whom? For a middle America that now knows its emergency response networks are dangerously inadequate or for the generation that will pay the national debt?

The seven Republicans – including Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins – and seven Democrats who dragged the Senate out of an embarrassing brawl over filibusters earlier this year can provide similar common sense on paying for Katrina. Together they are influential enough to determine the outcome of legislation, and the legislation they should demand would combine all four sources of cuts and revenues to pay for Gulf Coast reconstruction responsibly.