KATRINA’S SECOND WAVE

Added to a destructive $330 billion deficit already on the books, Congress this week was handed a poorly considered bill for rebuilding Louisiana and a starve-the-beast series of cuts to government services that demonstrate a disregard for the value of government service. Americans were horrified by the images of stranded and suffering residents of New Orleans; they should be both disgusted by these proposals in Congress yet heartened that neither will likely live for long.

The proposal by the Louisiana delegation first: A $250 billion overhaul of the state, containing 16 times the amount of funding for levee repair the Army Corps of Engineers says it would need to build the flood defense to withstand Category 5 hurricanes. The state infrastructure would receive a $31 billion boost under the bill, including highway projects unrelated to Hurricane Katrina.

Another project on the state’s list is a long-standing proposal for a $750 million lock that taxpayer groups and environmentalists rate as the fifth-worst boondoggle among Corps projects. Yet another project would deepen the Port of Iberia, the depth of which was unrelated to the hurricane.

Louisiana has a long and colorful history of politicians who played loose with the rules, creating problems long before whatever management problems exist at the Department of Homeland Security. Sen. Susan Collins, who is leading an investigation into the response to Katrina, said that state’s politicians have presented themselves “as ‘We’re rogues and we’re proud of that.’ Well, I think they’ve paid a devastating price for that.” They likely have, but they are making it worse by submitting a bill so large that it drains the good will of Congress and the public of their support for helping the stricken state.

Similarly, the Republican Study Committee (RSC), a group of more than 100 House Republicans, looked at the pain inflicted by Katrina and saw political opportunity. With lists of proposed cuts to ongoing programs to pay for one-time rebuilding costs, the group wants to cut Medicaid, Medicare – including a delay in the Medicare drug bill – pensions, college loans, funding to rural areas and to the Centers for Disease Control, among many others. These are programs that the group has never liked, but could not build support for cutting, so it waited until disaster struck and then, with the country in debt and hurting, proposed the cuts.

Cynicism doesn’t begin to describe it, though “incompetence” might. The RSC began last Wednesday by claiming its cuts would result in $1.2 trillion in savings over 10 years, then later that day revised the figure to $929 billion, a mere $271 billion error, then miscounted in its corrected release that pushed the total up another $20 billion. The numbers were wrong not because these members of Congress can’t count but because they don’t care about offsetting costs – they care about cutting programs. Ultimately, the proposal will do neither because Republican leaders wouldn’t come near it.

The victims of Katrina are caught between lawmakers taking advantage to pay for programs that aren’t needed and others trying to cut programs that are. Worse, and the reason these proposals should be noted, is that they signal many members of Congress see only opportunism in disaster, rather than lessons learned about the role of federal government. Certainly, Medicare cuts that affect millions over a decade would not create the same headlines that a huge hurricane would, but they could be responsible for more deaths.

What’s at stake in the aftermath of Katrina is the government’s reputation for being able to provide required services in an emergency. By misusing Katrina for other purposes, members of Congress jeopardize that body’s chances of carrying out the necessary reforms. That endangers everyone.