I’ve read in several places that funding was recently cut for protecting New Orleans from a flood like the one that just occurred. If that’s true, it’s a damning indictment of the Republicans, especially the Republican Congress. Since 1998, Congress has been on a profligate spending spree unmatched since at least the Johnson Great Society years. There seems to consistently be plenty of money available for all sorts of grotesque pork barrel spending, as in the recent highway and energy bills. Yet, apparently, not enough money for basic government functions. For quite some time now, it’s been apparent that the guiding principle of the Republican majority in Congress is “spend and spend, elect and elect,” and they deserve to be tossed out on their butts [update: unfortunately, it’s not as though the Democrats have shown themselves to be paragons of fiscal virtue–their only response to any Republican actions, other than related to the military, has been “spend even more money”]. For that matter, the president has neither disciplined Congress (no vetoes of any spending bills!) nor tried to restrict the federal government to anything resembling its valid functions (No Child Left Behind, anyone?) On domestic economic policy, at least, I often find myself yearning for Bill Clinton!
UPDATE: Two issues regarding New Orleans: (1) funding for the Corps of Engineers, which was not actually cut, as several readers have pointed out, with sources; (2) a New Orleans flood was identified by government planners as one of the top 3 potential disasters in the U.S., but, despite literally tens of billions in homeland defense spending, I’ve yet to see any evidence that this was made any sort of priority. Not at all unusual for government to have misplaced priorities, but as co-blogger Randy consistently points out, the more government does, the less it does well. I’m pretty curious regarding the public choice aspects of all this: were New Orleans and Louisiana Congressmen partciularly incompetent or uninterested in advocating for their area? Have they lacked seats on the appropriate committees?
A reader writes:
1) To refer to the funding decisions as “cuts” is slightly misleading. If the Army Corps of Engineers asked for additional funding and got some, but not all, of the increase they asked for, this is not a cut. And indeed, this would seem to be the situation. Overall funding for the Corps has increased every year under the Bushadministration by roughly $200 million per year; their budget rose from $4.1 billion in 2000 to $5.1 billion in 2005. Funding for flood control in the Mississippi and coastal regions (not counting emergency funding) has remained roughly constant at around $320 million per year. The Corps no doubt would prefer a budget twice this size (andsuch might be a good idea), but the fact that they have not received
one does not mean that their budget has been “cut”. The proper word would be “increased”. (Funding for New Orleans, rather than the region, may have decreased – I keep finding contradictory reports on this – but has clearly gone up elsewhere.)2) It’s ironic that you would praise th Clinton administration. Funding for the New Orleans levees was one of the targets of Clinton’s budget balancing efforts, and he “cut” (ie, did not fund at the level the Corps asked for) funding for the project. Not that I blame Clinton! He was merely continuing a very old trend, beginning at
least with Carter, if not earlier. One of the projects the Corps is trying to find funds for was started in 1965, and was supposed to take 10 years. It’s been a wee bit more than 10 years, but they’re still trying to get the funds out of Congress. (Is it a good and worthwhile use of funds? No idea. But it seems slightly disingenuous to pin the blame for this solely on Bush, or indeed, Republicans, who were not in control of Congress for the entire period.) For examples of Clinton’s “cuts”, see here.3) While you certainly didn’t say so, I think your post implied that
higher funding by the Bush administration for flood control might have
prevented the disaster. This would seem to be incorrect, since the
levees which failed had just been repaired and upgraded; the “missing”
funding was slated to go to other projects. The levees were designed
to withstand category 3 hurricanes, and there’s no reason to expect
they would not have done so, had New Orleans been hit with one. But
it was hit with a much stronger hurricane, and more funding could not
have changed the designed tolerances of the levees. The Corps has
clearly stated that they do not think the lack of funding was the
problem.4) Complete replacement of the category 3 levees with ones designed
for category 5 hurricanes would have helped, and in one of the more
depressing items I’ve seen, the project was estimated to cost $2.5
billion. It’s a tragedy that nobody has funded this, but I don’t
quite see why we should blame the current Bush administration and not,
say, the Carter administration – or indeed, why we should blame the
federal government and not the Louisiana state government. I find it
difficult to believe that a state with a yearly budget of $18 billion
couldn’t have found $2.5 billion for hurricane-proofing New Orleans
against a category 5 hurricane over the last few decades. What,
precisely, was MORE important?All that being said, as a fiscal conservative, I’ve been horrified by
the spending discipline shown over the last few years. I had labored,
during the Clinton administration, under the impression that one could
rely on Republicans for fiscal discipline. The Bush administration
has certainly cleared this up for me, for which I suppose I must thank
them. But funding for the Corps of Engineers is, if anything, an
example of the unrestrained spending increases (up 22.7% in 5 years).
I certainly agree with the overall thrust of your post – but I don’t
think funding levels for the Corps represents a “damning indictment”
of the Republican Congress. Then again, I don’t think we really need
to look for one, at least on fiscal matters – there’s certainly no
shortage!
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