Katrina talking point I need debunked

[hootinholler]

A co worker said today that A lot of federal money was left on the table during the levee rebuild project because the state didn't match the funds. He wasn't talking about the 250Mil cut for Iraq, he was talking about prior years.

I want to know the truth about this, it seems possible to me.

-Hoot

[evlbstrd]

1. The funding for the Corps of Engineers was cut drastically.

From Editor and Publisher:

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. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."

The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313

[hootinholler]

2. Thanks for that!

He said specifically that there were Federal matching funds left on the table by the state in prior years.

I'd like to find out if there were matching funds as well.

-Hoot

[evlbstrd]

3. From the same article:

"That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said."

$300,000 down on $4 million doesn't cut it.

[fob]

4. That's up to your coworker to provide the facts for THEIR assertion

Until then, just call bush*it!

And as a preemptive thought exercise let's say it's true. The State didn't provide matching funds so the Feds kept the dough.

1 - Why didn't the State do this? Is it more with the crashing of the economy by bush* that the State COULDN'T provide the funds? I don't know about LA but State taxes are often tied to Fed taxes so when bush* gave tax breaks to his* patrons, that left a lot of States with an instant shortfall too.

2 - FEMA listed the levees as the #3 priority in their 2003 (?) or 2004 report. You would think that a #3 priority would get some fucking FEDEDRAL dollars, no?

3 - Tell your CO to bite me since they seem to be looking for excuses for the inexcusable actions of bush* the lesser.

That is all.

:evilgrin: