WASHINGTON – President Bush tonight will call for an unprecedented federal commitment to rebuild New Orleans and other areas obliterated by Hurricane Katrina, putting the United States on pace to spend more in the next year on the storm’s aftermath than it has over three years on the Iraq war, according to White House and congressional officials.
With the federal tab for Katrina already nearly quadruple the cost of the country’s previous most expensive natural disaster cleanup, Bush plans to offer federal assistance to help flood victims find jobs, get housing and health care, and attend school, according to White House aides.
In a speech from the flood zone, Bush will commit the federal government to what many predict will become the largest reconstruction effort ever on U.S. soil.
The president will call on Washington to resist spending money unwisely, but some in his own party are already starting to recoil at a price tag expected to exceed $200 billion – about the cost of the Iraq war and reconstruction efforts. As emergency expenditures soar – with new commitments as high as $2 billion a day – some budget analysts and conservative groups are warning that the Katrina spending has combined with earlier fiscal decisions in ways that will wreak havoc on the government’s finances for years to come.
“I think absolutely it’s going to convert the political landscape in Washington,” Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said of Katrina’s effect. “We do have a social safety net in this country. Those aren’t just words. Government has a role to play in people’s lives.”
Administration officials concede the hurricane and its aftermath could push the budget deficit back above $400 billion next year, or about 3 percent of gross domestic product, just as the tide of federal red ink that rolled over Washington during Bush’s first term had begun to recede.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
