Hey, look! A little scrap of good news coming from the U.S. Capitol! There’s a move afoot in the Senate to provide funding for some Katrina Cottages, no matter what the President and FEMA think about it. How? By using the time-honored Congressional tradition of tacking the funding onto a must-pass appropriations bill primarily intended to fund something else entirely.
Yesterday, the Senate Appropriations Committee, headed by Mississippi Republican Senator Thad Cochran, approved $1.2 billion for a Katrina Cottage pilot program as an amendment to the FY 2006 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Hurricane Recovery. Sure, hurricane recovery made it into the title of the bill, but this is a case of last being least. The Senate Appropriations Committee’s version of the bill totals $106.5 billion in emergency funding: $72 billion for the “Global War on Terror” and $27 billion for hurricane recovery efforts. (Also $4 billion for agricultural disaster relief, $2.3 billion “to prepare for and respond to the threat of avian flu,” and… well, I’m sure that other $1.2 billion is accounted for somewhere… )
But back to the Katrina Cottages: in order for this proposed pilot program to become real, there’s still a lot that has to happen. The proposed funding must make it through Senate approval of the bill. Since the funding for Katrina Cottages is not included in the House-approved version of the bill (H.R. 4939), it must then survive the conference committee’s work of reconciling the House and Senate bills, and be part of the bill passed by the full Congress. Finally, it goes to the Oval Office. If the President had a line item veto, do you think there’s any chance that a Katrina Cottage program would make it off his desk intact? Me neither. But he doesn’t, and he wants all that military funding so he can keep on spreading freedom around the world, so I’m betting a piddling $1.2 billion for decent emergency housing won’t stop him from signing the bill into law.
This bill will be on the Senate floor the week of April 24. It’s time to write to your Senators. While you’re at it, write to your Representative, too. While you’re urging them to support building Katrina Cottages, you might also suggest that they take a little of that $6 billion a month that’s going to Iraq and Afghanistan, and use it to fully fund levee upgrades and coastal wetlands restoration on the United States Gulf Coast.
And then join me in singing along with that little scrap of paper on Capitol Hill:
But I know I’ll be a law someday
At least I hope and I pray that I will,
But today I am still just a bill.
Technorati tags: hurricane katrina + katrina cottage
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I volunteered at the Astrodome for Katrina refugees back when I was still in Houston. Some of them referred to the Superdome as “Bushville.”
In adverse situations, people can usually find some humor.
Is there any program that would allow private citizens to fund a Katrina House? Or at least, donate towards one? A colleague in Mississippi has written a plea for academics to come down to the Gulf Coast during the summer and help build houses, which I’ve posted on my profesional blog, cce.typepad.com. If a Katrina House fund exists, I’d be happy to post it on the blog as well, or suggest that we raise funds to provide a house on behalf of CCE.
Just surfed in from New Orleans. It was bureacracy that got us into this mess, and bureacracy will keep us here. Glad to see you like cats. We’re hoping to get 5 cats here–for that big hurricane levee.
Check out my post about my “Katrina Cats.”
Peace,
Tim