Hurricane Katrina costing one billion dollars a day: senator

[UpInArms]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1521&e=8&u=/afp/20050907/pl_afp/usweathercost

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The head of the US Senate budget committee said that the Hurricane Katrina relief operation is costing one billion dollars a day.

Senator Thad Cochran said the administration had expected about 500 million dollars a day would be spent on the emergency operation but expenses had doubled as the relief effort gathers pace and the extent of the disaster becomes apparent.

Cochran said the administration would have to seek a new spending bill from Congress within two weeks.

...more...

With Iraq costing a billion and day and Katrina costing a billion a day - the national debt must be skyrocketing.

So, how much would it have cost in the past 5 years just to fund those levee improvements???

[texastoast]

1. Wasn't it $2 million?

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BUN20050831&articleId=894

[judy]

2. One billion a day? Big deal!

As a taxpayer, I am happy to spend one billion a day to save lives and bring people back to their homes (yeah, I won't hold my breath) as opposed to spending 4 billion plus to kill people in Iraq!

[dajoki]

3. " Federal Emergency Management Agency spending more than $500...

million a day." but expected to rise. WPhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/06/AR2005090601676.html?referrer=email

[JPZenger]

4. Priceless

Cost of the Katrina Disaster $200 Billion

Cost of Improving the Leevees to
Withstand a Category 4 Storm $1 Billion


Cost of 10,000 Lives PRICELESS

[badgolfer]

5. Cost of Disaster

Wow, our MBA President is doing one hell of a job. Cuts millions out of the New Orleans Corps District for flood control and coastal restoration over the past five years and its going to cost the American taxpayer $100 to $200 billion, which is probably low.

I would like to see what the exact amount of funds were cut by the Bush administration over the past five years. I have seen all sorts of numbers from tens of millions on up.

[UpInArms]

6. here's some information:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/08/31/disaster_preparation/index.html

excerpt:

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.


The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."


The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

[Lindsay]

7. How much of that money is being spent

on military to guard an increasingly empty city? (And I don't know that any is allocated for that; I'm just asking.)

Guess their moms didn't warn them about being penny wise and pound foolish like mine did.