Bush puts focus on aid, not Katrina anniversary
Posted on Thursday, August 24, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/National/164416/
WASHINGTON — President Bush cautioned against placing too much importance on the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s Gulf Coast strike, saying a long, sustained rebuilding effort is still needed.
“It’s a time to remember that people suffered and it’s a time to recommit ourselves to helping them,” Bush said Wednesday. “But I also want people to remember that a one-year anniversary is just that, because it’s going to require a long time to help these people rebuild.”
A day earlier, the Bush administration’s Gulf Coast coordinator, Don Powell, said $ 44 billion has been spent to get the still-battered region back on its feet. A far larger sum — more than $ 110 billion — has been designated for the massive rebuilding project.
Of that money, approximately $ 17 billion will help rebuild an estimated 204, 000 homes in Louisiana and Mississippi.
Bush spoke on the South Lawn of the White House after meeting in the Oval Office with a New Orleans-area man who lost his home in the storm. Rockey Vaccarella, 41, of Meraux in St. Bernard Parish has been traveling the Gulf Coast region, making a documentary about his road to recovery as he and his family live in a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer.
Bush promised to continue working to make sure the federal government’s efforts in the rebuilding effort are efficient.
“I told Rockey the first obligation of the federal government is to write a check big enough to help the people down there,” Bush said. “And I told him that to the extent that there’s still bureaucratic hurdles, and the need for the federal government to help eradicate those hurdles, we want to do that.”
Vaccarella said he wanted to thank Bush for the federally provided trailers that have provided temporary housing to many in the region who lost homes, but also to keep the pressure on.
“I wanted to remind the president that the job’s not done and he knows that,” Vaccarell said. “I just don’t want the government and President Bush to forget about us.”
Nearly a year after the hurricane, criticism lingered.
In a report titled “Broken Promises,” House and Senate Democratic leaders described what they called “the failed response” of the administration since the hurricane hit.
Released Wednesday by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, DCalif., and her Senate counterpart, Harry Reid of Nevada, the report asserted that “thousands of families are still waiting” for FEMA trailers and that a significant proportion of money that FEMA has spent there “has been waste, fraud and abuse.”
“The Republican Congress didn’t enact needed housing money for homeowners in Louisiana until June, 10 months after Katrina — and the money has still failed to reach these homeowners,” it said.
In a separate report on wasteful procurement spending, two California Democrats, Reps. Henry Waxman and Dennis Cardoza, plan to announce today the formation of a “truth squad” to expose fraud and abuse in Katrina contract awards.
Bush was designating Tuesday, the Katrina anniversary, as a National Day of Remembrance to honor those who lost lives and property and those who helped rescue victims, White House spokesman Dana Perino said.
The president is spending two days in the Gulf region next week to mark the anniversary. He will be in Mississippi on Monday to have lunch with community leaders, walk through a neighborhood, and deliver a speech on the rebuilding effort, before traveling to New Orleans, where he was scheduled to have dinner with state and local officials and spend the night.
On Tuesday, Bush is attending a service of prayer and remembrance, and conducting a roundtable discussion on an effort headed by first lady Laura Bush to restock Gulf Coast libraries. He also will give a speech and visit with local residents, Perino said.
Democrats say Bush has failed to provide adequate help, just as FEMA was slow to aid the storm’s victims.
“Tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina survivors are still engaged in an unparalleled struggle to rebuild their lives,” Pelosi said in a statement. “Meanwhile, back in Washington, President Bush is holding a public relations blitz.”
Vaccarella didn’t share the sentiment.
“I just wish the president could have another term in Washington,” he said as cameras rolled on the South Lawn, where the two appeared together after coffee.
“Wait a minute,” Bush interjected with a laugh.
“You know, I wish you had another four years, man,” Vaccarella said. “If we had this president for another four years, I think we’d be great.”
Bush did not disagree, constitutional term limits notwithstanding. But Perino later made it clear that in a White House exhausted by war, terrorism and other issues, the idea of a third term didn’t stir much enthusiasm.
“Believe me,” she said, “I think staff thinks that two are plenty.”
Perino also said that when the invitation to meet with Bush was extended to Vaccarella, White House staff members did not know that he was a Republican who had once run for local office.
As he walked along the White House driveway, Vaccarella talked with reporters, urging other Katrina survivors to “get rolling” and see the glass as half-full instead of half-empty.
“We get knocked down, we get back up, we’re Americans,” he said. “We got hit, we just need to get back on our feet and get rolling.”
Information for this article was
contributed by Jennifer Loven of The Associated Press, Roger Runningen, Demian McLean and Peter Cook of Bloomberg News, Peter Baker of The Washington Post and Johanna
Neuman of the Los Angeles Times.