quote:Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had already launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control. The Corps was building a huge new lock for the canal, an effort to accommodate steadily increasing barge traffic.
Except that barge traffic on the canal has been steadily decreasing.
Sometimes, I just hate the way our system works. The residents of NO protested the project. It was listed as pork barrel spending. The lock wasn't needed. But we paid for it anyway.
It's all a frequin' game to them.
I hate it!
Stop the madness!!!
Do we really need to learn this lesson over and over? If you spend resources foolishly, they aren't there when you need them. And, meanwhile, you might be neglecting something important, like flood control.
The entire budgeting process is screwed up. Big time. And it needs to be fixed. Now.
quote:In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.
Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana's representatives have kept bringing home the bacon.
For example, after a $194 million deepening project for the Port of Iberia flunked a Corps cost-benefit analysis, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) tucked language into an emergency Iraq spending bill ordering the agency to redo its calculations. The Corps also spends tens of millions of dollars a year dredging little-used waterways such as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, the Atchafalaya River and the Red River -- now known as the J. Bennett Johnston Waterway, in honor of the project's congressional godfather -- for barge traffic that is less than forecast.
quote:But overall, the Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were designed to protect against a Category 3 storm, and the levees that failed were already completed projects.
quote:"We've been hollering about funding for years, but everyone would say: There goes Louisiana again, asking for more money," said former Democratic senator John Breaux. "We've had some powerful people in powerful places, but we never got what we needed."
That may be true. But those powerful people -- including former senators Breaux, Johnston and Russell Long, as well as former House committee chairmen Robert Livingston and W.J. "Billy" Tauzin -- did get quite a bit of what they wanted. And the current delegation -- led by Landrieu and GOP Sen. David Vitter -- has continued that tradition.
The Senate's latest budget bill for the Corps included 107 Louisiana projects worth $596 million, including $15 million for the Industrial Canal lock, for which the Bush administration had proposed no funding. Landrieu said the bill would "accelerate our flood control, navigation and coastal protection programs." Vitter said he was "grateful that my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee were persuaded of the importance of these projects."
quote:The Bush administration has proposed cuts in the Corps budget, and has tried to shift the agency's emphasis from new construction to overdue maintenance. But most of those proposals have died quietly on Capitol Hill, and the administration has not fought too hard to revive them.
In fact, more than any other federal agency, the Corps is controlled by Congress; its $4.7 billion civil works budget consists almost entirely of "earmarks" inserted by individual legislators. The Corps must determine that the economic benefits of its projects exceed the costs, but marginal projects such as the Port of Iberia deepening -- which squeaked by with a 1.03 benefit-cost ratio -- are as eligible for funding as the New Orleans levees.
"It has been explicit national policy not to set priorities, but instead to build any flood control or barge project if the Corps decides the benefits exceed the costs by 1 cent," said Tim Searchinger, a senior attorney at Environmental Defense. "Saving New Orleans gets no more emphasis than draining wetlands to grow corn and soybeans."
I've worked extensively in military construction funding - more so with the Navy than the Army Corps - and I can testify to the extremely high level of congressional ear-marking in total disregard for the mission.
The parts I've bolded, though, are not to cast blame on either party, but to highlight evidence that the NOLA funding decision was not "becasue they voted for Kerry." This is not the say they weren't politically motivated, of course. Every single participant in the appropriation process is guilty. Army and Navy construction are one of the central forms of pork, and everyone participates.
It needs fixing. Now.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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We need government by technocrats, frankly. The reason the Federal Reserve works so well is because people with technical accumen are running the show.
The fact that every Federal agency is headed by an appointee is just ludicrous.
The fact that legislators can insert pork into unrelated bills as a means of selling their vote and bringing home the bacon for the hometown is ludicrous.
This is stupid.
Why is it even called the Army corps of Engineers? It should be called the Congressional projects administration or something.
quote:We need government by technocrats, frankly. The reason the Federal Reserve works so well is because people with technical accumen are running the show.
As long as the technocrats are not the people who implement the projects. There's a whole other sort of politics within the agencies.
quote:I wonder if the Congressional hearings on Katrina will examine Congress' role in all this.
I doubt it. If the Corps people who testify are brave about it, though, they could make a splash by pointing out the issues.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote: The entire budgeting process is screwed up. Big time. And it needs to be fixed. Now.
I'm not sure which budget you are implying, Dag, because most of your information shows (as has been shown in other areas, as well) that the Federal side DID budget the money -- it was the local, Louisiana government that showed corruption and used it for things other than what the Feds had ear-marked it for.
Congress said "here's your money for levee work" and LA said, "thanks" and then spent it on other things.
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The money was earmarked for the projects it was spent on. Army Corps projects are run by the Army Corps - they don't let people touch their money.
It was earmarked at the request of the Lousiana congressional delegation (or some subset thereof), but it was earmarked by the federal government.
Some Army Corps projects are done in conjunction with local or state run projects; this does not appear to be the case here.
Which part of the quoted portions suggest that the state or local government spent the money on other things?
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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I saw the link after I posted. I believe those were different federal grants than the ones here. Certainly, local incompetence exacerbates the problem.
These funding issues with the Corps are well-documented.
Certainly, though, they aren't the only issue.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Budgeting at a big enough level is blound to be fraught with this kind of stuff though, isn't it?
Is this an argument for greater decentralization?
And a quick thank you to Bob (and the Post) for asking some good questions rather than merely using Katrina as one more stick to beat republicans with.
I think the biggest political issue facing this country is the desire to blame. People are so busy trying to play pin the buck on the hot potato covering your ass that I have had serious doubts that *anyone* (outside the principals) really knows the truth of what happened in any national news story. The fact that a national media outlet and that political opposites like Bob and Dag can sort through this with intellectual honesty and find some sensible agreement heartens me considerably.
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