[Mb-civic] The post-Katrina leadership gap - Robert Kuttner - Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

The post-Katrina leadership gap

By Robert Kuttner  |  October 1, 2005

THE AFTERMATH of Hurricane Katrina raises urgent policy challenges, for 
both the immediate future and the long term. Tragically, there is no 
sign that the administration is rising to either of them.

It is now painfully clear that both prevention and relief in the case of 
disasters like Katrina require something that conservatives reject -- 
government planning. In the absence of competent planning, levies are 
not maintained, development proceeds helter-skelter, public investment 
flows on the basis of pork-barrel politics, and rescue efforts resemble 
biblical catastrophes.

Four years after 9/11, and three years after a Homeland Security 
Department was cobbled together, the federal government has failed to 
help cities and states develop effective emergency plans for large-scale 
disasters, whether from terrorist actions or natural shocks. Some cities 
are better prepared than others, but the process of contingency planning 
for maintaining civil order, getting food, water, and shelter to 
refugees, and devising orderly evacuation plans has lagged far behind 
the risk and the need. Cities cannot deal with large-scale disasters 
without federal help, but burying FEMA inside the Homeland Security 
Department actually weakened its resources and response capacity.

In the absence of serious, federally assisted recovery and development 
planning, of the sort pioneered by the Tennessee Valley Authority, we 
are seeing housing provided catch-as-catch-can, new tax incentives as 
the main strategy of economic redevelopment, and a rash of no-bid 
contracts to cronies. The are no plans to dramatically upgrade New 
Orleans's flood defenses to withstand another Katrina as the city is 
rebuilt, and no overall planning process.

The second immediate challenge is fiscal. With federal deficits already 
at unsustainable levels, the rebuilding after Katrina will require 
upwards of $200 billion in unanticipated federal outlays, just in the 
first year. President Bush's support for this spending is his grudging 
acknowledgment that government has a necessary role to play, after all.

On top of a deficit already projected at over $300 billion this year, 
the projected additional Katrina outlays have already given the Federal 
Reserve a pretext to keep hiking interest rates, despite a softening 
economy. That will increase our dependence on foreign borrowing.

Amazingly, Bush is pressing Congress to deepen the deficit by making his 
tax cuts for the wealthiest permanent. He hopes to recoup that loss and 
the Katrina costs with even deeper cuts in other social outlays.

But there are far better ways. For starters, let's roll back tax cuts on 
the wealthiest 2 percent of taxpayers. We also need an excess profits 
tax on the oil companies, who are reaping the benefits of tight oil 
supplies due to a natural disaster. We could use the proceeds for 
emergency energy subsidies.

And as a counterweight to the windfall profits of the no-bid Katrina 
contracts (and the Iraq no-bid contracts, too), let's revive a fine 
World War II era institution, the Renegotiation Board. When that war 
required hundreds of billions in quick-turnaround, production contracts, 
Congress sensibly legislated an audit process. Once the production work 
was completed, the Renegotiation Board's audit determined whether 
profits had been excessive. If so, the contractor had to give the excess 
back to the Treasury.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/10/01/the_post_katrina_leadership_gap/
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