Bush, Congress Return From Vacation to a Very Different Washington Agenda

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http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBH5ZCMBDE.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush and Congress are back in town, facing a hurricane-induced agenda that is vastly different from what they anticipated when they left the city five weeks ago.

It will be all Katrina for a long time - from the spending of billions more dollars to help clean up and repair hurricane damage to the Gulf Coast, to meeting the economic, social and other needs of thousands of evacuees scattered across the country, to congressional hearings into how well the federal government responded to the disaster, particularly to the flooding of New Orleans.

"They're not going to be able to deal with much, other than the ramifications of Hurricane Katrina, for a while," says David King, an associate professor of public policy at Harvard University.

All the attention and money that will be spent on Katrina's destruction could influence issues ranging from tax policy to Bush's proposal to remake Social Security to the war in Iraq.

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1. But look how much they saved by not repairing the levees.

Bet the Republicans think this is just damn bad luck.