Word: gulf
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...Square in New Orleans' soon-to-reopen French Quarter. The man who said during his re-election campaign that "government is limited in its capacity to heal and help" spoke in bold terms about "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen," proposing a tax-advantaged Gulf Opportunity Zone to create jobs, worker-recovery accounts to help evacuees pay for job training and child care, and even an Urban Homesteading Act to let some low-income victims of Katrina build homes on cheap federal land. Think of it as George W. Bush's New Deal...
...money flows into the Gulf States faster than water is pumped out of New Orleans, it's safe to say the recovery from Hurricane Katrina has entered a new phase: the financial free-for-all. The President was careful not to get specific about what the "generosity of a united country" might cost, but economists estimate that Katrina's final price tag could easily top $200 billion. While frugal Republicans like Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Arizona Representative Jeff Flake (one of 11 members of the House to vote against the President's relief bill) instinctively called for budget...
...priority. Neither side of the aisle has seemed capable of demonstrating fiscal prudence and compassion simultaneously, while the President, hobbled by a $331 billion budget deficit, an unpopular and expensive war in Iraq, and an official admission that he mishandled the initial crisis, could neither afford his Gulf Coast largesse--nor afford not to extend...
...part of that expanded oversight, FEMA is sending some 30 auditors to the Gulf to follow the money. Not to be outdone, Congress has its own team of 24 investigators hot on the FEMA auditors' heels. But unless the President appoints an independent czar to oversee the entire reconstruction operation, Democrats and Republicans alike fear it may be as poorly managed as the initial response to the storm. FEMA's track record before Katrina isn't too encouraging: during last year's $2 billion cleanup of Hurricane Frances, millions of relief dollars ended up in the hands of residents...
...crucial housing issue is ultimately handled--much like the final bill for rebuilding the Gulf--is anybody's guess. For all the imposing dollar figures and bold proposals being bandied about, it's clear that Washington is making this up as it goes along. "It's going to cost whatever it costs," is how the President put it last week. Given the battering his reputation has taken in the past few weeks, that open-ended approach makes perfect sense. After all, no matter what it ends up costing, the White House has learned that the price of inaction is much...