They have just begun to exploit

September 12, 2005

For some, every crisis is an opportunity in disguise. Exhibit A: the Republicans’ policy agenda and Hurricane Katrina.

It didn’t take long for the GOP machine to see the possibilities. Almost immediately after the devastation became clear, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) suggested Congress might take up an “economic stimulus package,” with more tax cuts. Shortly thereafter, Bush suspended wage supports and relaxed government contracting rules in Gulf Coast states so that contractors could pay less than the local “prevailing wage” on construction projects. Shortly after that, Rick Santorum used the storm to take a few shots at the National Weather Service, which he’s been trying to privatize.

In each instance, GOP leaders were simply exploiting the storm, using it as an excuse to do what they’ve wanted to do anyway. What’s more, it’s about to get worse.

Republican leaders in Congress and some White House officials see opportunities in Hurricane Katrina to advance longstanding conservative goals like giving students vouchers to pay for private schools, paying churches to help with temporary housing and scaling back business regulation.

“There are about a thousand churches right here in Houston, and a lot of them are helping people with housing, but FEMA says they can’t reimburse faith-based organizations,” Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader, said, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Mr. DeLay, who joined three of President Bush’s top economic advisers on a tour of relief efforts near the Houston Astrodome, added that Congress should also allow students displaced by the hurricane to use vouchers to pay for tuition at private schools. Conservatives have championed school vouchers for decades.

Before, it was, “If we don’t embrace [random right-wing agenda item], the terrorists have won.” Soon, it will be, “If we don’t embrace [random right-wing agenda item], Katrina’s victims have lost.”

It’s apparently part of a new White House strategy.

Time reported that the Bush gang has crafted a “comeback plan,” which includes, as usual, making the far-right base happy.

Advisers are proceeding with plans to gin up base-conservative voters for next year’s congressional midterm elections with a platform that probably will be focused around tax reform…. There are no plans to delay tax cuts to pay for the New Orleans reconstruction or the Iraq war, and Bush is likely to follow through on his vow to veto anticipated congressional approval of increased federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research.

The Bush gang is faced with the same choice it confronted in the president’s first term: work to bring people together or split the country in half — and hope Bush is left with the bigger chunk. They made the wrong choice after 9/11 and they seem anxious to do so again.

Here’s a crazy idea: we should exploit Katrina too. Now more than ever, we need a national health care system. Now more than ever, we need to bring troops home from Iraq. Now more than ever, we need to cancel tax cuts for Paris Hilton and Bill Gates.

Good for the goose…..

  • I’m surprised that I haven’t heard the reverse
    argument yet, that I did see from a writer
    to our only major newspaper in Idaho: namely,
    that Katrina proved once and for all that big
    federal government doesn’t work, and that
    all non essential agencies and departments
    should be disbanded, including FEMA,
    EPA, all of them. Shrink it down to Grover
    Norquist’s ideal.

  • Well I think taht liberals and progressives should do the same thing. Take advantage of the storm for our long-standing policy initiatives. I’m not joking. We’ve always been in favor of universal health care, right?

    Now there are all kinds of displaced people who are without health care. Some of them were poor. Others have employers who are now under water with no plan to COBRA. So why not just say that this disaster is so big, and it would be wrong to burden individual states unfairly. So let’s give medicare to everyone, and while we’re at it, let the rest of us join medicare too.

  • Gary, check out this column written by John Kerry in today’s Chicago Defender:

    The truth is that many children languishing in shelters this week will get vaccinations for the first time. Thousands of adults will see a doctor after going without a check-up for years. Illnesses lingering long before Katrina will be treated by a healthcare system that just weeks ago had no interest in helping. In this time of tragedy, we demand healthcare for all. Yet for the rest of the year this nation silently tolerates the injustice of 11 million children and 30 million adults suffering without healthcare.

    We all have to ask ourselves what it says about our nation, and our leadership, when only in a time of crisis we help people who need help most. Our nation’s real test after Katrina goes well beyond the rebuilding of New Orleans, Mississippi and Alabama. We will be judged by how we deal with the all the unmet challenges and injustices in our nation.

    Sounds like you and Kerry are on the same page.

  • I wouldn’t say that Georgie’s boys made the wrong choice after 9/11–they did win a second term by scaring and/or bribing enough people. But it’s obvious they’re still using the same tactics. On the other hand, it looks like this time they are starting to reap what they sowed.

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