http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14533214/site/newsweek/
Still Blind to the Poverty
How could George W. Bush have blown the aftermath of Katrina? It's not
as if he lacks confidence in the power of his office.
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
Sept. 4, 2006 issue - A year ago, in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina,
NEWSWEEK published a cover story called "Poverty, Race and Katrina:
Lessons of a National Shame." The article suggested that the disaster
was prompting a fresh look at "The Other America"—the 37 million
Americans living below the poverty line. "It takes a hurricane," I
wrote. "It takes the sight of the United States with a big black
eye—visible around the world—to help the rest of us begin to see again."
I ended on a hopeful note: "What kind of president does George W. Bush
want to be? ... If he seizes the moment, he could undertake a midcourse
correction that might materially change the lives of millions. Katrina
gives Bush an only-Nixon-could-go-to-China opportunity, if he wants it."
Some readers told me at the time that this was naive—that the president,
if not indifferent to the problems of black people, as the singer Kanye
West charged, was not going to do anything significant to help them. At
first this seemed too cynical. The week after the article appeared, Bush
went to Jackson Square in New Orleans and made televised promises not
only for Katrina relief but to address some of the underlying struggles
of the poor. He proposed "worker recovery accounts" to help evacuees
find work by paying for job training, school and child care; an Urban
Homesteading Act that would make empty lots and loans available to the
poor to start over, and a Gulf Enterprise Zone to spur business
investment in poor areas. Small ideas, perhaps, but good ones.
Well, it turned out that the critics were largely right. Not only has
the president done much less than he promised on the financing and
logistics of Gulf Coast recovery, he has dropped the ball entirely on
using the storm and its aftermath as an opportunity to fight poverty.
Worker recovery accounts and urban homesteading never got off the
ground, and the new enterprise zone is mostly an opportunity for
Southern companies owned by GOP campaign contributors to make some money
in New Orleans. The mood in Washington continues to be one of
not-so-benign neglect of the problems of the poor.
"This is the greatest lost opportunity I've ever seen in public life,"
Sen. John Kerry told me last week. "The Jackson Square speech ought to
stand as one of the all-time monuments to hollow rhetoric and broken
promises." Kerry depicted the response during the last year as a
slow-motion Superdome II, where the federal government once more walked
right past people in distress.
If the president was MIA, Congress hasn't been much better. Consider the
estate tax and the minimum wage. The House in June passed a steep
reduction of the estate tax (so as to apply only to couples leaving more
than $10 million to their heirs) that would cost the Treasury three
quarters of a trillion dollars over the next decade. Last time I
checked, that was real money. Senate Republicans tried to push it
through by linking the bill to an increase in the minimum wage, which
has not been raised in nine years. The idea was to get credit for giving
crumbs to the working poor—but only if the superrich receive hundreds of
billions of dollars. Fortunately, the bill failed. Unfortunately, other
tax cuts for the wealthy keep moving through the system, ballooning the
deficit and drying up money for everything else. Meanwhile, the GOP
wants to make welfare reform (now 10 years old) more punitive, which
will increase suffering.
There are a couple of bright spots. Congress passed $1 billion to help
the poor avoid freezing in the winter. And a bipartisan coalition added
$7 billion this year in appropriations for health, education and other
social programs. As the Shriver National Center on Poverty Law points
out in a midterm congressional scorecard, this victory reflected
widespread concern that the budget had shortchanged the poor.
But that was no thanks to the president. After all the heat he took last
year, how could Bush have blown the aftermath of Katrina? It's not as if
he lacks confidence in the power of his office. He believes he can fix
Iraq and transform the Middle East. He aspires to spread democracy to
the far corners of the globe. But the fate of an American city and
millions of his impoverished countrymen are apparently beyond his
control, or perhaps just his interest.
© 2006 Newsweek
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
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