Dean: Bush Should Not Use Tragedy to Advance an Ideological Agenda

[MaineDem]

For Immediate Release
September 15, 2005
Contact: Josh Earnest - 202-863-8148

Dean: Bush Should Not Use Tragedy to Advance an Ideological Agenda

Washington, DC - In advance of President Bush's address this evening in
New Orleans, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean issued
the following statement urging President Bush not to use the tragedy of
Hurricane Katrina to implement an ideological agenda that rolls back
environmental protections and workers' rights:

"Just as Americans around the country have banded together to help
those affected by the storm, Democrats stand ready to work in a
bipartisan fashion to implement a Gulf Coast Marshall Plan to rebuild
the homes, businesses and communities destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
Democrats, though, will not stand aside and allow the Bush
Administration to use the worst natural disaster in American history to
ram through regulatory changes that suspend environmental protections
and roll-back workers' rights. Undermining these protections will only
exacerbate the economic and social fault lines Katrina painfully
exposed.

"To bring genuine relief to the residents of the Gulf Coast, President
Bush needs to put aside partisan politics and put the needs of Katrina's
survivors front and center, by protecting their freedoms and giving them
access to the tools they need to recover and rebuild. Democrats
understand that the American people are counting on their leaders to
unite this country and rebuild our sense of community in the face of
this national tragedy.

"Finally, the American people deserve answers to the tough questions
about why the federal government was so grossly unprepared to respond to
this national disaster. With our national security at stake, President
Bush should push the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill to support
the Democratic plan to appoint an independent commission to investigate
the federal government's late and inadequate response to Hurricane
Katrina."

**********

Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee,
www.democrats.org. This communication is not authorized by any
candidate or candidate's committee.

[Inland]

1. For any problem, Conservatives randomly pick an item on trog "to-do" list

Hurricane? Eliminate pollution controls and drill in ANWR, concentrate more power in president. And since it's a really BAD hurricane, add lowering taxes, too.

[Wordie]

3. So TRUE! And when they screw up, the results are used to justify what they

wanted to do in the first place! (As in the case of the Katrina disaster.)

Dean needs to be on tv TODAY, debating all the conservatives they've had on.

[texpatriot2004]

2. Dean is spot on here. I am so glad Dean is a man of courage

and integrity. Thank you Howard Dean for speaking out.