In the immediate aftermath of hurricane Katrina, George W. Bush seemed not to have learned from the mistakes of last December’s Indian Ocean tsunami when U. S. response was criticized for being slow and inadequate. As the carnage, destruction and loss of 150,000 lives in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and elsewhere unfolded, the President maintained radio silence and his brush-clearing vacation. Though he did reluctantly cut his five-week vacation short in the wake of hurricane Katrina, Bush didn’t race back to the White House or even the Gulf coast, but to a rally in San Diego where he famously engaged in a Nero moment by playing guitar with a country music performer. He was rightly accused of indifference and inaction on both occasions, as he dawdled when a strong leader was needed. But there was one major difference this time, and as always, it’s name is cash. In a bizarre series of pledges resembling no-limit poker bets to help tsunami victims, the Bush administration first promised $400,000 in aid before raising that to $4 million almost instantly, only to increase that to $15 million a day later. When other nations complained of American stinginess, $35 million was pledged before the final total of $350 million was reached.
Determined to avoid accusations of tightfistedness on U. S. soil, the administration responded with more than $50 billion in emergency aid and let leak plans calling for $200 billion in reconstruction funding. In a speech delivered from a deserted New Orleans on the same day that the $200 billion number was floated, the President promised to do whatever it took to resurrect the affected areas. Amid jokes from skeptics about the effort’s primary goal being to rebuild the President’s damaged image rather than the shattered Gulf coast, most media talking heads and steno pencils framed the nascent reconstruction program as a modern-day WPA, and Bush as channeling the ghost of FDR. But as we’ve come to expect from the media’s first responders, the instant analysis, along with most of the follow-up, was a shortsighted, overly simplified, context-and-background-free mess that once again allowed the administration to blur their true intent.
There were plenty of clues even before the speech began, and more after, that revealed the larger strategy. A week earlier while still under blistering pressure for the federal government’s disappointing response to Katrina, Bush signed an executive order suspending the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage law, in effect guaranteeing a wage cut for tens of thousands of workers who will eventually sweat to rebuild the stricken region. Just days later it was announced that no-bid contracts were awarded to Bush donors and supporters, Halliburton, Bechtel National, and Shaw Group. Not only were these lucrative contracts not subject to bidding, they were awarded on a “cost-plus” (WSJ sub.) basis which provides a built-in profit regardless of how much is spent. And on the morning of Bush’s New Orleans address, the New York Times reported that a bill in the Senate would allow the E.P.A. to suspend all environmental regulations across the Gulf coast and that the President’s chief political advisor Karl Rove would be in charge of the government-wide reconstruction effort. In the address itself, Bush proposed the creation of a “Gulf Opportunity Zone:”
“Within this zone, we should provide immediate incentives for job-creating investment, tax relief for small businesses, incentives to companies that create jobs, and loans and loan guarantees for small businesses…”
As if the above list wasn’t sufficiently illuminating for our friends in the media, the day after the President’s address saw reports of retaliation against environmental groups who had condemned the emergency response, a morbid (and apparently futile) search for families who were subject to the estate tax after losing loved ones to Katrina, and even a plan to use school vouchers to allow private school students to attend other private schools at taxpayer expense. The clueless class (and many in the President’s own party) ignored the preponderance of evidence that Katrina recovery would be used not as a Depression-era works program, but as an opportunity to implement any number of Republican – though not necessarily conservative – initiatives that lack public support and in some cases, legality.
If those in the media posing as political analysts were as interested in getting the story as they as they are in keeping score and putting events into neat little boxes, they would of course see that the story isn’t the price tag, but the effects the types of spending will have on this country for a generation. The toxic combination of deregulation, tax cuts, “opportunity zones,” entrepreneurial subsidies/incentives, and social experiments like vouchers reads like Santa Claus‘ list when he checks it twice for naughty American Enterprise Institute minions. The destruction across the Gulf coupled with Republican control in Washington provides the opportunity of a lifetime to enact so-called “market-based solutions” that thus far haven’t made it out of think tanks and fantasies. Anyone who has watched this administration should know that it’s no coincidence that Rove, a man whose above-the-line purpose is to create a permanent Republican majority and below-the-line goal is to make sure that accountability is reduced to a relic, was chosen to coordinate the reconstruction.
Alongside the chilling thought that Rove’s new portfolio almost certainly means that the administration has assurances that he will not be indicted in the Valerie Plame leak case, lies the longer-term reality that comes with implementation of methods that have been roundly rejected, some for decades. Environmental deregulation, only popular with polluters, and school vouchers, only popular with those who haven’t considered their effects, will have their presence felt almost immediately. Next will be the economic effects of still more tax cuts and federal giveaways to business. This is the least conservative part of the plan, yet also the least troubling to Republican critics of the reconstruction spending. The ability to locate a business in an area already slated to receive hundreds of billions of dollars in federal aid, and billions more in state, local, and private investment should really be all the incentive any proprietor needs. Tax cuts and direct subsidies that benefit businesses already experiencing a windfall from relaxed wage rules, environmental standards, and government contracts is not only wasteful and anti-market, but promotes further class inequality. And here the media was, telling their audience that the President was having an FDR moment and proposing these measures because he wanted to fight poverty and racial issues.
Rove isn’t a reconstruction expert or even a policy guru, but the enduring payoff that he has been dispatched to secure is more important than the various methods used. And thanks to the death of reality and empiricism, it doesn’t matter whether Bush’s proposals work or not. Any marginal success (or the plausible claim thereof) will be met with parades and calls to replicate the tactics nationwide. Failure (where not deniable) will be greeted with a round of “blame the victims” and of course “blame the Democrats,” who despite holding no power, will be held responsible for naysaying. It’s the ultimate win/win situation for the administration and the greater Republican party whose wary members will come around when they realize that, unlike Iraq, when billions of dollars are misspent and unaccounted for, it will be their constituents and campaign contributors who benefit.
It’s already becoming clear who will sacrifice so that others will be rewarded. The displaced residents who will wind up working for minimum wage to rebuild their towns will likely share the fate of some Hurricane Charley survivors who still live in temporary trailers because their previous neighborhoods became too exclusive/expensive. Victims of Katrina and other similar disasters need help to get back on their feet, not to become subjects of social experiments cooked up in right wing think tanks. People who resist direct aid to Katrina’s displaced on the grounds that it perpetuates the “welfare queen syndrome” should by now know that Ronald Reagan created the welfare queen myth, and Bill Clinton signed welfare reform that made even the myth impossible. Anyone still clinging to the mental image of people getting rich on public assistance needs to come to grips with their own racism.
Throughout his Presidency, Bush has said:
“I don’t believe the government is to try to pick winners and losers in the tax code.”
But by removing nearly all constraints (not to mention risks) on business while hampering the poor in their effort to rebound from Katrina, he’s doing just that. It’s not liberal. It’s not even conservative. It’s thoroughly Republican.