Conscious Choice: Bush Stiffs New Orleans

October 2005 | Hightower Lowdown

Bush Stiffs New Orleans

By Jim Hightower

Finding Waldo is easier than Finding George.

The day that Hurricane Katrina was poised to sock New Orleans right in the teeth, our country’s president blithely winged his way westward to Arizona and California. He went out there politicking while Katrina was devastating the people of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi — indeed, Bush’s handlers could not get him to report for duty at the White House until two days after the catastrophe had struck.

Maybe it’s just as well, for the real damage he did to New Orleans was in previous months when he was at his desk, drawing up budgets. In order to pay for his misadventure in Iraq and his tax giveaways to the rich, Bush made drastic cuts in funds for hurricane protection and flood control, specifically for New Orleans.

For 2003, he slashed the money for an essential project to shore up levees around New Orleans and build more pumping stations, stalling the project. Then, in 2004, Bush allowed less than 20 percent of the funds that his own Corps of Engineers said were necessary to shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain, so that project had to be put on hold. When hit by Katrina, Pontchartrain’s banks broke open, flooding the city’s neighborhoods up to 20 feet deep.

Also in 2004, federal funds were pledged for a crucial study of how New Orleans should prepare for a Category 4 or 5 hurricane such as Katrina — but the Bushites, still diverting funds to their occupation of Iraq, ordered the local office of the corps not to begin any studies, and their budget for 2005 eliminated all money to develop hurricane protection plans for the city.

It’s not like a big blow to the Big Easy was unexpected. Local and federal experts have been warning for years that it was coming, but the Bushites said the money was needed in Iraq to protect our national security. As a dismayed local official pointed out last year, however, “[Finishing the levees] is a security issue for us.”

Jim Hightower is the best-selling author of “Let’s Stop Beating Around the Bush,” from Viking Press. For more information, visit jimhightower.com.

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