Progressive Talking Points 2/24/06

Katrina – All Talk No Action

The White House released its report on the "lessons learned" from the response to Hurricane Katrina. At 228 pages, the report is short on real solutions to the problems exposed by Katrina. The report doesn’t address the most critical issues, at times offers rationales for mistakes, and can read like a recitation of history. What would be more helpful for the country is if the White House actually admitted the personal mistakes that were made during the failed response to Katrina and did something to rectify them.

• The White House report goes out of its way to avoid assigning blame. The White House report weighs-in at 228 pages – and manages to not single out any individual for blame. Both the House and GAO reports found that not only did President Bush not properly lead during Katrina, but that Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff deserved a large amount of blame for the failed response. While there were certainly structural problems at both DHS and FEMA, as Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) said, "Only a full understanding of what went wrong and who was responsible will enable us to correct our path for the future."
  
  
• The White House has not budgeted enough money for emergency preparedness. President Bush’s budget cut "funds for state and local programs by nearly 10 percent. First responder programs also were cut, including a 45 percent cut in federal firefighter assistance. Despite a promise to make the levees stronger in New Orleans, the Bush budget called for a 34 percent cut on the construction budget for the Army Corps of Engineers" and a 13 percent cut to flood prevention.
  
  
• The White House solution will create extra levels of bureaucracy while not fixing the problem. The White House solution to Katrina problems is to create more levels of bureaucracy. They would create local offices of DHS which would replicate the regional FEMA offices that, when managed properly, worked fine. They would create the "Disaster Response Group” but this new group wouldn’t stop the kind of infighting that happened between Chertoff and Mike Brown. What is needed is not the creation of more bureaucracy but credible, accountable, and strong leadership within DHS, FEMA and the White House.