Commentary—

Let’s Let The Poor Pay For New Orleans

By Donald Kaul

President Bush certainly gave an inspiring speech in the middle of an empty New Orleans the other day. He promised to rebuild the city, heal the sick, lift up the downtrodden, and end racial inequality. Best of all, it wasn’t going to cost us anything.

Well, hardly anything. Maybe a few government programs will be sacrificed; the president didn’t say which ones. But whatever is decided, it won’t involve higher taxes; he made that clear. “We got to maintain economic progress,” he said.

What a guy.

Congress, oddly, seemed less than blown away by the speech. “We are not sure he knows what he is getting into,” a House Republican official (who remained anonymous for fear of losing his job) told The New York Times.

And Tom DeLay, perhaps the most powerful member of the Republican leadership in the House, has openly expressed the opinion that he and his colleagues have already trimmed so much fat out of the federal budget that there is little left to cut.

Stop laughing. This is a serious column.

Let me help Mr DeLay. If I were going to cast around for a place to begin cutting, I would start with the $286 billion transportation bill the president recently signed into law. It contained $24 billion in pet projects tacked on at the last minute by representatives and senators and which, for the most part, have received no budgetary scrutiny. They include a $250 million bridge in Alaska that will serve an island that has fewer than 100 residents.

For me, that would be the starting point.

Congressional salaries would be next. Let’s face it; if we are offering big salaries and terrific benefits to congresspersons in hopes of drawing intelligent, honest, dedicated public servants to the job, it is not working. Let’s try something else; making them live like the rest of us, for example.

None of that will be done, of course. Even before the storm, Republicans leaders were talking about cutting Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor, and delaying the start of the Medicare Drug program for the elderly it recently voted into law.

And, really, isn’t that the way it’s always been? When it comes to sacrifice and suffering, poor people to the head of the line.

Still, to be fair, it should be pointed out that the president did not create this hurricane. He was merely slow responding to it. Had he and his men had been faster lives would have been saved but the devastation would be just as overwhelming and the repair bill just as huge.

It would have been nice if all those billions we spent on Homeland Security had meant something, however. At this point you have to think that our government’s response to a surprise attack will be a surprised look.

(Donald Kaul recently retired as Washington columnist for the Des Moines Register.)