Even before the cost of Hurricane Katrina is added to the federal ledger, a Congressional Budget Office study commissioned by Democrats predicts President Bush will fail to keep his promise to cut the deficit in half by the time he leaves office.
EPA appears to have taken the same tight-lipped approach in responding to Katrina, denying the public crucial information collected with taxpayers’ money on behalf of taxpayers in the first place.
Republicans are scrambling to minimize the political fallout from such debacles as the crowds of hungry and thirsty left outside the New Orleans Superdome and Convention Center pleading for help. The party line is that the pictures didn’t reflect the massive federal effort under way to help the dispossessed, and that Michael Brown, the embattled director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, did everything he could.
Even after requesting $60 billion for Katrina relief, the White House is trying to trim the regular budgets of U.S. agencies that track hurricanes and perform flood control.
America is wounded like it hasn’t been for four years, reeling from a major shock to its infrastructure and economy, unsettled by the flailing of government in the face of chaos and anxious about steadily escalating oil prices.