[StBernard] Bush: New Orleans still struggling after Katrina

[Westley Annis]

Bush: New Orleans still struggling after Katrina
By RICHARD LARDNER - 3 hours ago 

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) - President Bush says he sees "hopeful signs of
progress" in New Orleans three years after Hurricane Katrina's devastation,
while acknowledging the city is still struggling to recover.

Bush travels to New Orleans and nearby Gulfport, Miss., on Wednesday after
appearing at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Orlando, Fla. The
White House on Tuesday released an advance copy of a speech he plans to
deliver in New Orleans.

This latest visit to New Orleans will be Bush's 11th since Katrina's 140 mph
winds pummeled coastal areas and caused hundreds of billions of dollars in
damage.

The president's Gulf Coast stop comes nine days before the actual third
anniversary of Katrina.

The Bush administration's bungled response to Katrina led to a torrent of
criticism, especially from the black community, which claimed race was a
factor in the slow pace of recovery operations.

The Katrina backlash came as sectarian violence in Iraq was escalating. The
result was the lowest approval ratings of Bush's presidency.

In his speech, Bush says $126 billion in disaster recovery aid has poured
into the Gulf Coast, allowing schools, businesses and homes to be rebuilt.

"There is still a lot of work to do before this city is fully recovered,"
Bush says. "And for people who are still hurting and not yet back in their
homes, a brighter day might seem impossible. Yet a brighter day is coming
and it is heralded by hopeful signs of progress."

Yet, the nearly dozen trips and the money hasn't erased the image of a
leader who failed to react at a critical moment.

"It's defined him a great deal in the public's mind," said Thomas Mann, a
senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

"That, along with the war in Iraq, are really the pivotal events in his
political demise," Mann said. "First impressions have ways of becoming
lasting ones and certainly that was the case with Katrina."

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said in an interview with The Associated Press
that the recovery in New Orleans was far from complete and key projects
won't be finished without more federal money.

"It's not the quantity of the visits; it's the quality of the visits,"
Landrieu said of Bush's upcoming stop.

Landrieu accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency of being too
tightfisted.

The agency acts "more like a supercharged comptroller's office than a
supercharged recovery office," she said.

In New Orleans, Bush will speak at Jackson Barracks, the state headquarters
for the Louisiana National Guard. The 100-acre base straddles the city's
Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, two of the areas hit hardest by Katrina,
and has been undergoing a $210 million reconstruction.

The property contains a large collection of historic buildings, including
antebellum homes that overlook the Mississippi River.

Rebuilding the barracks was viewed as strategically important. The facility
and the thousands of people who worked there are an economic engine for the
city.

"If it's left abandoned, certainly that isn't helpful to the redevelopment
of either of those heavily damaged neighborhoods that surround it," said
Wade Ragas, a New Orleans real estate consultant.

The White House agreed this month to give Louisiana 30 years to repay $1.8
billion for levee improvements in the New Orleans area. The money initially
was to be repaid by 2011. But state officials said they needed 30 to avoid
hurting a still-recovering economy.