[StBernard] Louisiana Backlash

[Westley Annis]

Louisiana Backlash
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=12935

by Robert Novak
Posted Mar 05, 2006

President Bush's visit to Katrina-ravaged Louisiana Wednesday follows six
months of bungling that threatens political catastrophe for the state's
Republicans. He will boost his belated $4.2 billion plan finally to provide
housing for people made homeless by the storm, but it may be too little, too
late. The government's post-hurricane performance has been a mess, and
Republicans get the blame.

Rep. Richard Baker, a 10-term conservative Republican congressman from Baton
Rouge with a 91 percent pro-Bush voting record, sat down with me in his
Capitol Hill office last week to talk politics frankly: "The backlash is
unknowable, but it is a big concern. When we go from a Republican White
House to a Republican Congress to a Republican Senate to a majority of
Republicans in the state congressional delegation, we are viewed as in
charge. We are being measured by this storm response and by what Republicans
do to help poor people."

That bleak assessment turns on its head simplistic analysis following
Katrina that predicted evacuation of Democratic-voting African-Americans to
the far corners of the nation would turn Louisiana into a deep red
Republican state. On the contrary, the performance of the last six months
may return the state to Democratic blue. Quite apart from who was at fault
for an inadequate immediate response to the storm, Republicans are blamed
for what has happened since then.

Baker expressed "great frustration" to me about the $27 billion in federal
funds actually spent (well below the widely mentioned $85 billion figure).
He said he "abhorred" 12 percent administrative expenses incurred by the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Of the $27 billion, nothing has
been spent on housing. "We have thousands of acres of homes just standing in
ruins, and the pace with which that cleanup is going is bitterly
frustrating," Baker said.

In his frustration, Baker proposed a new federal entity (the Louisiana
Recovery Corp.) to finance redevelopment of devastated areas. While Baker
got it through the House Financial Services Committee by a 50 to 9 vote, the
White House killed it on grounds it would impede local initiative. Prominent
Louisianans then were ready to write off the Bush administration as
hopeless. The first sign of flexibility was flashed Feb. 14 when the $4.2
billion package was unveiled.

Will it save Republicans from the consequences of six months of inaction and
incompetence? The reported minimum cost of the notorious trailers as
temporary housing is $60,000 per unit, enough to build permanent modular
housing. "We would have been better off," Baker told me, "if we'd had a
contract with Wal-Mart, where you could have gone in and bought 100,000
emergency response packages, with bottled water and Pop-Tarts."

The latest governmental outrage concerns the pending $4.2 billion in Katrina
supplemental appropriations, which includes a "hazard mitigation" program. A
homeowner with a damaged residence from Katrina would be offered a generous
cash payment, with the stipulation that no replacement home -- or any other
structure -- could be built on this supposedly flood-vulnerable land. When
an outraged Baker asked the administration's view of this anti-development
caveat, he said he received this answer: "Well, we think this would make the
appropriation a little more palatable to members of Congress."

In an opaque administration, it is not clear who makes such decisions. It is
presumed nothing is decided in the White House without the knowledge of
senior presidential adviser Karl Rove, but he has handed off all
congressional distress calls to National Economic Council Director Al
Hubbard. The complaining lawmakers have not received much satisfaction from
Hubbard, but he was vigorously involved in drafting the new housing plan.

In the eyes of distressed Louisianans, nobody seems to be making decisions.
That's bad news for Richard Baker. Anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 flood
evacuees have moved into Baker's Baton Rouge district, where his largest
margin of victory in contested races has been 6,000 votes. "If I'm viewed as
part of the problem by those people who have lost everything," he said, "the
political consequences of that are pretty clear." The question is whether
that will be clear to George W. Bush when he arrives in New Orleans
Wednesday. 

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