Rebuild New Orleans
A year ago, we saw how ill-prepared FEMA was for the unprecedented destruction of Hurricane Katrina. A year later, we see little progress as thousands of victims still can't go home, find jobs, or place their children in school. The Gulf Coast sits vulnerable to the next storm with schools and hospitals in desperate need of repair.
Twenty three percent of displaced Katrina survivors still face unemployment, but Republican leaders stand in the way of extending their unemployment benefits. Colleges and universities on the coast struggle with $1 Billion in damage and try to make do with just $95 million in rebuilding assistance. New Orleans educators are doing their best to pull their schools together, but still need 300 more teachers just to serve the students who've returned so far.
We owe them a plan to fix the federal levee system to withstand a category five storm, to rebuild schools and colleges. We need to extend unemployment benefits to Gulf Coast workers, because displaced survivors have gone without unemployment pay since June.
Bush gave promises in a speech at Jackson Square a year ago, but Katrina debris still sits on New Orleans streets. Forty percent of the city has no power, and half its hospitals and schools remain closed. Down the coast in Mississippi, some towns are seeing as few as five percent of their homes rebuilt.
While these victims suffer, the aid that Congress finally approved is going to waste. Last week, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) caught the Bush regime wasting parts of 19 rebuilding contracts worth $8.75 Billion. Every one of those wasted dollars could have contributed to rebuilding peoples' lives. Meanwhile, we’re wasting more than $450 Billion a year in Iraq.
Last year, Congress set aside $17 Billion in housing aid to Gulf Coast homeowners. Only $100 million of that aid has been spent. In Louisiana, aid checks reached Katrina survivors just last week; in Mississippi, a scant two dozen aid checks have gone out. Local governments that relied on federal promises of aid to rebuild their fire departments and sewer systems have found themselves mired in paperwork with little federal help in sight.
Twenty three percent of displaced Katrina survivors still face unemployment, but Republican leaders stand in the way of extending their unemployment benefits. Colleges and universities on the coast struggle with $1 Billion in damage and try to make do with just $95 million in rebuilding assistance. New Orleans educators are doing their best to pull their schools together, but still need 300 more teachers just to serve the students who've returned so far.
We owe them a plan to fix the federal levee system to withstand a category five storm, to rebuild schools and colleges. We need to extend unemployment benefits to Gulf Coast workers, because displaced survivors have gone without unemployment pay since June.
Bush gave promises in a speech at Jackson Square a year ago, but Katrina debris still sits on New Orleans streets. Forty percent of the city has no power, and half its hospitals and schools remain closed. Down the coast in Mississippi, some towns are seeing as few as five percent of their homes rebuilt.
While these victims suffer, the aid that Congress finally approved is going to waste. Last week, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) caught the Bush regime wasting parts of 19 rebuilding contracts worth $8.75 Billion. Every one of those wasted dollars could have contributed to rebuilding peoples' lives. Meanwhile, we’re wasting more than $450 Billion a year in Iraq.
Last year, Congress set aside $17 Billion in housing aid to Gulf Coast homeowners. Only $100 million of that aid has been spent. In Louisiana, aid checks reached Katrina survivors just last week; in Mississippi, a scant two dozen aid checks have gone out. Local governments that relied on federal promises of aid to rebuild their fire departments and sewer systems have found themselves mired in paperwork with little federal help in sight.
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