August 31, 2007 11:58 PM UTC

Tancredo: We've Spent Enough on Katrina

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• by: Colorado Pols

From the man who brought you the suggestion that we bomb Mecca…

Republican presidential candidate Rep. Tom Tancredo says it’s time to stop “runaway government spending” on post-Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts.

“Enough is enough,” the Colorado congressman said in a statement today, aiming to head off requests for more money to help New Orleans recover from the hurricane that ravaged the city and much of the Gulf coast two years ago this week.

Tancredo’s statement comes two days after President Bush visited New Orleans and promised residents there that “better days are ahead” and “we haven’t forgotten, and won’t.”

Katrina smashed through levees in New Orleans and flooded 80 percent of the historic city on Aug. 29, 2005. It also obliterated coastal Mississippi and killed 1,600 people.

Several New Orleans neighborhoods still look like a wasteland, and Tancredo says the federal government is partly to blame. It has spent about $114 billion – or around $1 billion per week – but hasn’t paid enough attention to how the money has been used, he said.