> You're still off some tangent. Several areas of the levees had been down to > FOUR FEET in height, and the repairs were in progress. > > I'd like to see the opposition to THAT, and I don't mean by anti-tax groups > that don't want to spend money on anything besides a national defense. >
I'm not proclaiming oppossition to that. Moreover, let's really get to it.. levees weren't "down to" four feet, they had -sunk- four feet: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313 " The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet." Here's what was happening: as we kept restructuring the levees, they kept gaining more heft.. and they sunk faster and faster. From 1995-2001, we spent more then $240M. And I agree that cutting the budget on this item, in retrospect, could have been reviewed. But let's see what we got.. we spent the most money imaginable after 1995, and the levees sunk -quicker- in that 6 year period then over the 20 years preceeding. Shouldn't that have told us something? It should have told us one of two things: either this whole thing was idiotic and we should just abandon the city and realize that while it was great military positioning for the French in 1712, it's stupidity now; or we should have realized that this would be a continuous spending spree to hold a little dutch boy's finger in the dyke. > "Federal flood control spending for Southeastern Louisiana has been chopped > from $69 million in 2001 to $36.5 million in 2005, according to budget > documents. Federal hurricane > protection for the Lake Pontchartrain vicinity in the Army Corps of > Engineers' budget dropped from $14.25 million in 2002 to $5.7 million this > year." > > "Both the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper and a local business magazine > reported that the effects of the budget cuts at the Army Corps of Engineers > were severe." As I noted, because the ACE submitted their budgets which were mostly gutted, they didn't plan on dispersement well.. and some projects where senators had a lot more power did better. After all, how many people right or left were really eager to help a flailing Trent Lott in 2002 after his debacle.. kicking him while he was down by cutting into state subsidies was pretty entertaining for everyone. So, in the end (going year by year) we went from a project in 1995 that was proposed to spend $430M over 10 years to a project that spent slightly under $360M over ten years.
