Yesterday, on All Things Considered, NPR listened again to Bush's odd, eerie speech in Jackson Square, New Orleans, a couple of weeks after Katrina. Standing there against a dramatically lit St. Louis Cathedral, the President made all kinds of promises to the citizens of the Gulf Coast. But did he follow through? What follows is an accounting -- a transcription of the discussion.
All Things Considered: A little more than two weeks after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, President Bush flew to New Orleans and delivered a speech in Jackson Square in the French Quarter. The plaza was totally empty. The President wore an open-collared shirt, no tie, and spoke with St. Louis Cathedral lit up behind him.
President Bush: Good evening. I'm speaking to you from the city of New Orleans, nearly empty, still partly under water, and waiting for life and hope to return...
ATC: We're going to examine some of the promises the President made that September night, see whether they've been fulfilled. We're joined by our White House correspondent, David Green. David, you were there in New Orleans for that speech that night. It was a time when the Administration had been roundly criticized for its response to Katrina.
David Green: That was an eerie night. As if New Orleans weren't abandoned enough, they cleared everyone out from the Quarter and Jackson Square. The President's motorcade drove past all the shut down bars and businesses. It was pitch black. There were armed troops standing in the dark. If you remember, when Katrina hit, the President was already having a tough time. He was at his ranch; the Iraq war was losing popularity. War protester, Cindy Sheehan, had shown up at his ranch. And then Katrina hit. His administration took a lot of criticism. The White House was trying to figure a way to show him in command and regain their footing. So they decided to have him come to New Orleans and stand there along in the square and give the speech. On TV it had this almost otherworldly effect. The cathedral was glowing behind him and it was otherwise very dark. The President spoke for a while and pledged a lot of money that night. The reaction among many in New Orleans was to sort of shrug their shoulders, not sure if he would really come through. But even if they were skeptical about what money they were going to get, they certainly had their hands out!
The "Gulf Opportunity Zone" (for Donald Trump?)
ATC: Well, one of the specific things the President talked about that night was creating what he called a "Gulf opportunity zone" for Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
President Bush: 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 including minority-owned enterprises, to get them up and running again.
ATC: What's the report card? How is the Gulf Opportunity Zone doing?
DG: The report card is pretty good. This is actually one of the big accomplishments the White House points to. Mr. Bush signed it into law. There's now a swath across the Gulf Coast where businesses can apply for tax relief -- in total something like $8 billion in tax relief to rebuild or expand. The new law has also produced a ton of confusion and one of the unintended side effects is that tax lawyers in Louisiana and Mississippi are getting a whole lot more business to help people figure things out. One of the debates in Congress is over whether casinos could jump on some of this tax relief. There was a compromise that allowed them to take advantage of the relief to build hotels and restaurants but not the gambling halls themselves. Actually one of the people who might benefit from this Gulf Opportunity Zone is none other than Donald Trump who is in a joint venture to build a new casino in Diamond Head, near Gulfport, Mississippi. They're hoping they can get some of the tax relief and relief from the Gulf Opportunity Zone. Some of the President's critics said he focused a little too much on tax cuts which, as we know, he likes, instead of finding other ways to help. But a pretty good report on this so far.
Getting people back to work
ATC: Here's another proposal from a year ago. This has to do with the President's goal of getting people back to work.
President Bush: I propose the creation of worker recovery camps to help those evacuees who need help finding work. Under this plan, the federal government would provide accounts of up to $5000 which these evacuees could draw upon for job training and education to help them get a good job. And for child care expenses during their job search.
DG: This was a big promise from the President that has not been fulfilled. This was money he hoped to offer to people to use to pay for education, more job training, even to pay for taxis to go to job interviews. The idea is still stuck in Congress. Some are actually surprised he even proposed it that night. A couple of years before he had made a similar proposal to help people who were out of work and find a job. Democrats didn't really like the idea because they feared it would replace traditional unemployment insurance. And some Republicans didn't like it either because they thought it was a new government program. So a bit of a surprise that the President took another stab at it as part of the speech.
Housing
ATC: The President talked there in Jackson Square about the history of poverty in New Orleans and elsewhere in the Gulf region. One of his proposals had to do with housing programs to help with that.
President Bush: And to help lower income citizens in the hurricane region build new and better lives, I also propose that Congress pass an urban homesteading act. Under this approach, we will identify property in the region owned by the federal government and provide building sites to low income citizens, free of charge, through a lottery. In return, they would pledge to build on the lot with either a mortgage or help from a charitable organization like Habitat for Humanity.
ATC: How's that been working?
DG: Not good so far. This plan is also stuck in Congress. It was one of those ideas that sounded good at the time. Mr. Bush made it sound pretty easy. You'd find federal property that could be used for housing, make it happen, get housing built, and get people living there quickly. It's hard to say exactly why nothing has happened. The White House points to Congress and says, Look, we proposed a good idea -- the lawmakers have to act on it. Critics of Mr. Bush say if you're really committed to doing something like this, you could be doing a bit more lobbying on Capitol Hill.
How much money has the federal government spent, so far?
ATC: If you total up what the President was proposing that night, can you give us a sense of the lump sum of what would have been involved in federal spending?
DG: He didn't talk about numbers that night, but this summer the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington, has been studying how much the federal government has committed to all of these programs in the last year and they're tally is in the neighborhood of $108 billion. That's for hurricanes Katrina as well as Rita and Wilma. Obviously, a good portion of it for Katrina. It's worth noting that a lot of that money was for emergency housing, for clean-up, for debris removal, and not for long-term rebuilding. So a lot of people think Washington is going to be spending a lot more -- perhaps more than $200 billion in the end. In the speech at Jackson Square, the President said he wanted a lot of help, not necessarily to come from the federal government but to come from private donations and people coming to the region and volunteering.
President Bush: So I've asked USA Freedom Corps to create an information clearing house available at usafreedomcorps.gov so that families anywhere in the country can find opportunities to help families in the region. Or a school can support a school. And I challenging existing organizations -- churches, scout troops or labor union locals -- to get in touch with their counterparts in Mississippi or Louisiana or Alabama and learn what they can do to help.
What about private money?
ATC: We know there was a lot of private money coming in at the start. Has that continued?
DG: It seems to be. The non-profit Foundation Center tracks giving from corporations and foundations. They think there's been abouto $600 million coming in from those entities and there are estimates in the several billion dollar range from private donations. Of course, if you compare that to the more than $100 billion coming from the government, there's not really a comparison at all. But there is money coming in. In terms of the President's promise to make a government clearing house for information about giving and volunteering, it does exist. If you go to the website, you can click around and it's pretty easy to see where you can send money and where the volunteer opportunities are, if you're interested in going down there.
Accountability
ATC: The President ... did address to some extent the shortcomings of his administration's response to Hurricane Katrina and he talked about how the federal government should be better prepared for a disaster like that in the future.
President Bush: Four years after the frightening experience of 9/11, Americans have every right to expect a more effective response in a time of emergency. When the federal government fails to meet such an obligation, I, as president, am responsible for the problem. And for the solution. So I've ordered every Cabinet secretary to participate in a comprehensive review of the government response to the hurricane. This government will learn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina.
ATC: Has the government learned those lessons?
DG: I don't think anyone knows yet. There were various reports done even by the White House itself that found the government response was in many ways a mess. Some of the Congressional reports were even tougher on criticizing the President himself. The White House now says the military should play a much larger role in future storms and that could bring up all kinds of legal questions about what the US military can do when it's deployed within US borders. Even after a year, there are also still so many complaints from the Gulf Coast about FEMA, why trailers haven't arrived after all this time, why so many people are still out of their homes. The bottom line: we might not know until the next big storm whether the White House and government have done their job and fixed what was so clearly wrong.
