[Mb-civic] Krugman

[Mike Blaxill]

Will Bush Deliver?
    By Paul Krugman
    The New York Times

    Monday 10 October 2005

    Ever since President Bush promised to rebuild
the Gulf Coast in "one of the largest
reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen,"
many people have asked how he plans to pay for
that effort. But looking at what has (and hasn't)
happened since he gave that speech, I'm starting
to wonder whether they're asking the right
question. How sure are we that large-scale
federal aid for post-Katrina reconstruction will
really materialize?

    Bear with me while I make the case for
doubting whether Mr. Bush will make good on his
promise.

    First, Mr. Bush already has a record of
trying to renege on pledges to a stricken city.
After 9/11 he made big promises to New York. But
as soon as his bullhorn moment was past,
officials began trying to wriggle out of his
pledge. By early 2002 his budget director was
accusing New York's elected representatives, who
wanted to know what had happened to the promised
aid, of engaging in a "money-grubbing game." It's
not clear how much federal help the city has
actually received.

    With that precedent in mind, consider this:
Congress has just gone on recess. By the time it
returns, seven weeks will have passed since the
levees broke. And the administration has spent
much of that time blocking efforts to aid
Katrina's victims.

    I'm not sure why the news media haven't made
more of the White House role in stalling a
bipartisan bill that would have extended Medicaid
coverage to all low-income hurricane victims -
some of whom, according to surveys, can't afford
needed medicine. The White House has also
insisted that disaster loans to local
governments, many of which no longer have a tax
base, be made with the cruel and unusual
provision that these loans cannot be forgiven.

    Since the administration is already
nickel-and-diming Katrina's victims, it's a good
bet that it will do the same with reconstruction
- that is, if reconstruction ever gets started.

    Nobody thinks that reconstruction should
already be under way. But what's striking to me
is that there are no visible signs that the
administration has even begun developing a plan.
No reconstruction czar has been appointed; no
commission has been named. There have been no
public hearings. And as far as we can tell,
nobody is in charge.

    Last month The New York Times reported that
Karl Rove had been placed in charge of
post-Katrina reconstruction. But last week Scott
McClellan, the White House press secretary,
denied that Mr. Rove - who has become a lot less
visible lately, as speculation swirls about
possible indictments in the Plame case - was ever
running reconstruction. So who is in charge? "The
president," said Mr. McClellan.

    Finally, if we assume that Mr. Bush remains
hostile to domestic spending that might threaten
his tax cuts - and there's no reason to assume
otherwise - foot-dragging on post-Katrina
reconstruction is a natural political strategy.

    I've been reading "Off Center," an important
new book by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson,
political scientists at Yale and Berkeley
respectively. Their goal is to explain how
Republicans, who face a generally moderate
electorate and have won recent national elections
by "the slimmest of margins," have nonetheless
been able to advance a radical rightist agenda.

    One of their "new rules for radicals" is
"Don't just do something, stand there." Frontal
assaults on popular government programs tend to
fail, as Mr. Bush learned in his hapless attempt
to sell Social Security privatization. But as Mr.
Hacker and Mr. Pierson point out, "sometimes
decisions not to act can be a powerful means of
reshaping the role of government." For example,
the public strongly supports a higher minimum
wage, but conservatives have nonetheless managed
to cut that wage in real terms by not raising it
in the face of inflation.

    Right now, the public strongly supports a
major reconstruction effort, so that's what Mr.
Bush had to promise. But as the TV cameras focus
on other places and other issues, will the
administration pay a heavy political price for a
reconstruction that starts slowly and gradually
peters out? The New York experience suggests that
it won't.

    Of course, I may be overanalyzing. Maybe the
administration isn't deliberately dragging its
feet on reconstruction. Maybe its lack of
movement, like its immobility in the days after
Katrina struck, reflects nothing more than
out-of-touch leadership and a lack of competent
people.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101005A.shtml