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Topic: Miss. Gov. Barbour: Louisiana Aid Package Seems 'Very Excessive'
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RaptureRH
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Member # 5120
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Hurricane Tab Below Original Estimates
Oct 07 9:07 AM US/Eastern
By ANDREW TAYLOR
Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON
As lawmakers ramp up their efforts to cut spending to pay for hurricane relief and rebuilding, they are finding that the total cost promises to be less than originally feared.
The final tab is likely to be less than $150 billion, instead of an estimated $200 billion or more that was tossed about immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in August, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin said Thursday.
"There's nothing that we've seen so far that adds up to even approach $200 billion," Holtz-Eakin told The Associated Press, amplifying on testimony to the House Budget Committee. "Everything we've seen is in the vicinity of $150 billion or below."
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/10/07/D8D376688.html
Posts: 163 | From: Houston TX | Registered: Sep 2005
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RaptureRH
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Miss. Gov. Barbour: Louisiana Aid Package Seems 'Very Excessive'
by Terence P. Jeffrey
Posted Oct 7, 2005
Exclusive HUMAN EVENTS Interview:
In an exclusive interview with HUMAN EVENTS Editor Terence Jeffrey this week, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R.) outlined the combined state-and-federal effort to rebuild the vast area in his state damaged by Hurricane Katrina, saying his government would not use the disaster “as a way to gouge the taxpayers.”
Barbour said he hoped the federal government would pay 90% of the tab for repairing public infrastructure in Mississippi, but estimated the total federal costs for relief, recovery and rebuilding in his state would be under $50 billion and might not be much more than $30 billion.
The $250 billion aid package being recommended for nearby Louisiana by that state’s U.S. senators, Barbour said, “seems to me very excessive.”
Barbour, a native of Yazoo City, Miss., has been involved in national Republican politics since he worked in the 1968 Nixon presidential campaign. He served as political director for President Reagan and as chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1994, when the Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in more than 40 years.
Asked about speculation he might run for President in 2008, Barbour said it was “highly, highly unlikely,” but did not rule it out.
Defending himself in congressional testimony last week, former FEMA Director Michael Brown said that the biggest mistake he made in dealing with Hurricane Katrina was not recognizing “that Louisiana was dysfunctional” while noting that “the system worked in Mississippi and Alabama; the system did not work in Louisiana.” Do you agree with Brown about that?
GOV. HALEY BARBOUR (R.-MISS.): Well, I don’t anything about Louisiana. So, I’m not knowledgeable to comment about there. But I can tell you that in Mississippi the federal government has done a whole lot more right than wrong. They have been good partners. They haven’t been perfect partners, but I haven’t been perfect. If you talk to our mayors and county officials, who have just been fabulous, they still haven’t been perfect either.
So, I don’t expect perfection, particularly when you have the worst hurricane in American history, which hit Mississippi dead on and obliterated our communications system, our electrical system, made our roads impassable, wiped out police stations, fire stations. All of our public infrastructure was literally destroyed in a matter of hours, and to expect perfection in the aftermath of that is just unrealistic......
Louisiana Senators Mary Landreu and David Vitter have proposed a $250 billion federal aid package, which, if I understand it correctly is money that they want to go only to Louisiana and not to Mississippi. Is that correct?
BARBOUR: I don’t much about their proposal. However, I don’t think the cost of relief, recovery and rebuilding will be anything like that amount. That seems to me very excessive. We are trying to project what the costs would be here and it is a small fraction of that.
Do you think that the relative damage in Mississippi is not that much less than in Louisiana?
BARBOUR: In many ways it is far worse.
Do you have a general idea of how much the total federal cost of rebuilding Mississippi’s damaged areas?
BARBOUR: It will be well under $50 billion. Well under. Our best estimates right now are in the low thirties. I don’t want anybody to think we are trying to compare Mississippi to anyone else. We’ll stand on our own two feet. We need the federal government’s help.
At the same time, we are going to be good stewards of the taxpayers’ money, and we are not going to try to use this as a way to gouge the taxpayers. The American people have been incredibly generous to us—private philanthropy, corporate philanthropy, the enormous number of volunteers who have come down here from all over the country. Our sister states have been fabulous in sending us National Guard, highway patrol, investigators, resources of all types.
North Carolina sent us a whole hospital, with two operating rooms, which, by the way, was financed by FEMA, I might add. But everybody has been so generous to us, and the federal government has put hundreds of millions of dollars in here already that we are obligated and we will be good stewards of the American taxpayers’ money. That is the least we can do.
see link for full item:
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=9554
Posts: 163 | From: Houston TX | Registered: Sep 2005
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