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August 31, 2007 11:58 PM UTC

Tancredo: We've Spent Enough on Katrina

  • 37 Comments
  • 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.

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37 thoughts on “Tancredo: We’ve Spent Enough on Katrina”

  1. 90% – profit for politically connected companies getting the contracts to “fix” things.

    10% – actually spent, generally on useless or badly made goods to show something for the money.

    It’s not to help the area, it’s to help “free enterprise.”

    1. Maybe if his buddy up in the White House and his cronies would stop wasting the taxpayer dollar propping up corporations like Blackwater and Halliburton, they might actually be able to spend money responsibly like the GOP actually purports to support.

      2. He’s the only politician who can say he was against federal aid to the Gulf states from the beginning.

        And he was against it for the correct reasons.

        The rest of thecountry shouldn’t have to bail the idiots who build on the coasts, and waste and corruption was entirely predictable.

        Everyone agrees with him. He’s the only politician with the courage and incentives to say what he thinks.

        1. That ain’t courage, that’s nuts. It was the government that built the faulty levees. America has over 12,000 miles of coastline. You’re claiming that those who build there are idiots simply affirms the idocy of your statements. Waste and corruption being “entirely predictable” sound like someone on the receiving end of the corruption, not like those of us who pay taxes and don’t expect to see our hard earned money wasted and stolen. Maybe Republicans can get comfortable with that, not me. “Everyone agrees with him”!

          You’re a complete idiot. You two deserve each other.

        2. I brought that up a year or so ago when all the bleeding heart Dimocrats were screaming that the govment wasn’t doing enough for the poor, poor people of the shit hole called Norleens.
          Normal people would look around themselves once they were say, 10 or 12 years old and say, “mommy, daddy, why do we live underneath the ocean?”
          Most human beings with an ounce of intelligence would move to higher ground.

          Same can be said to the dipshits that live in the other Colorado (California) on the earthquake faults. After the first time the earth shook wouldn’t most folks pack up and fuckin move to a safer place?
          Anyone that feels sorry for dumbasses like that or the idiots that lived in N.O. deserve what they got.

              1. I don’t live in a wildfire prone area, tornado prone area, flood plains, earthquake prone area, or anything even close to those things.
                I actually plan ahead a little. The worst I can expect is a high wind hitting my house. Or perhaps a drunk liberal flying a plane crashing into it.
                Oh yeah,
                idiot.

        3. New Orleans was not built below sea level. How would the French done that 250 years ago?  They didn’t, it was above the river.

          New Orleans has been a victim of two man made actions. The land between the Gulf and the city has been cleared of most of the vegetation that used to create a natural barrier, and canals and waterways have been dug out, making the Gulf easier to get to the city.

          The other factor is subsidence of those same lands by pumping a gazillion barrels of oil out.

          There are probably other factors that I’m not aware of, but it is a lot more complex than “building below sea level.”

          1. Now that’s something we might have trouble getting out of hog riding, beer swilling, tattoed red necks with little or no education and a world view that consists of two letters….me.

        4. This Washington Post column lists seven reasons the Gulf Coast and NO are vulnerable to storms, and all of them have to do with the flood and channel changes made to benefit the rest of the country. The argument is that because the vulnerability of the Coast was increased to benefit the rest of the economy, all states are obligated to pay for hurricane damages.

          Do you buy it?

          http://www.washingto…

          There has been much debate in the past 20 months over protecting Louisiana from another lethal hurricane, but nearly all of it has been conducted without any real understanding of the geological context. Congress and the Bush administration need to recognize six facts that define the national interest.

          ? Fact 1: The Gulf of Mexico once reached north to Cape Girardeau, Mo. But the Mississippi River carries such an enormous sediment load that, combined with a falling sea level, it deposited enough sediment to create 35,000 square miles of land from Cape Girardeau to the present mouth of the river.

          This river-created land includes the entire coast, complete with barrier islands, stretching from Mississippi to Texas. But four human interventions have interfered with this natural process; three of them that benefit the rest of the country have dramatically increased the hurricane threat to the Gulf Coast.

          ? Fact 2: Acres of riverbank at a time used to collapse into the river system providing a main source of sediment. To prevent this and to protect lives and property, engineers stopped such collapses by paving hundreds of miles of the river with riprap and even concrete, beginning more than 1,000 miles upriver — including on the Ohio, Missouri and other tributaries — from New Orleans. Reservoirs for flood protection also impound sediment. These and other actions deprive the Mississippi of 60 to 70 percent of its natural sediment load, starving the coast.

          Just trying to be fair here.

          1. that I have to let your light shine.  Good work.

            I do think that it is time to evaluate moving the city of NO. Otherwise, it is an ever increasing rat hole of expensive real estate needing ever increasing monies to save it from itself. 

            I have absolutely no idea how to accomplish such a thing or the complexities involved.

            Time to let the fondness American has for NO to surrender to reality.

            And yes, it’s a national problem, not a parish problem.  Every farmer upstream has a bit of culpability amongst many others. OK, even us non-farmers, we eat the food that they grow.

    2. but he has a point.  If all that money is just going to waste, and there is not much tangible progress for all that money spent, the Feds need to stop throwing money at the problem and identify where all the waste and inefficiency is.  After, and only after, that point will there be any real progress in New Orleans.  It’s not how much money you spend but how efficiently you spend it.

  3. that miserable state could help a little bit too.

    Oh wait, it is Bush’s fault.
    The evil Bush dictates complete and utter control on every aspect of every branch of the federal government at all times.
    Dang. I keep forgetting.

    4. at clinging to their straw men arguments.

      Craig acts like a damn fool and the righties are all about “Yea but Clinton….”
      Duke Cunningham is jailed and it’s “Yea but Jefferson….”

      We used to play “yea but” when I was in middle school.
      Some of us outgrew that game….
      The FEDS built the levees….
      The Hurricane hit and whether or not the Mayor and the Governor were Tweedledee and Tweedledum or whether they were responsible or irresponsible, FEMA leaders and Bush were selfish, cold hearted incompetent greedy twits.  For pete’s sake, people were on their roofs begging for help, bodies were floating in the water and Bush goes off to play a guitar?
      How does anyone defend that????
      Oh that’s right…Bill Clinton had a BJ so no matter how many people died in NOLA or in Iraq it doesn’t matter…….sheesh

    5. so could the parishes, the school districts, the citizens…but not the Feds.

      This was the main reason I stopped working overseas. The money sent to help the people is diverted for admin, cronyism, graft…It truly is is sad to see and even more sad to see in the US.

      FEMA needs to release funds to local governments to address problems the locals know needs to address. Too much paperwork, strings attached and government can’t rebuild New Orleans.

      This is so tragic.

  4. Wow, the Tancredo machine must be doing really, really well and he can get to 271 electoral votes without those 9 Louisiana votes.

    Oh, but wait – did he lose the Florida electoral votes after offending the entire Spanish speaking population?  But, hey, Florida is only 27 electoral votes.

    Once he anchors Texas, New York and California with their combined 120 electoral votes, he is almost half way there.

  5. I don’t know why I’m still amazed by how silly some of these comments are, especially from the liberals.

    Just because Tancredo (or anyone else) isn’t always right doesn’t mean he’s never right.

    And he’s clearly right about money for the Gulf Coast.  Not only is it a complete boondoggle, but the moral hazard created (like the flood insurance program on steroids) is both unjustifiable and unconstitutional.

    And as for the guy who thought this would be the right article in which to add a comment about Larry Craig, you’re fairly ridiculous to say that the response from Republicans has been to talk about Bill Clinton.  I’m sure someone has mentioned it, but almost to a person the response from Republicans is that Craig should resign immediately due to his unacceptable behavior.

    Back on the subject of post-Katrina, I urge you all to read this great article on the matter:
    http://www.realclear…

      1. Vitter is from a state with a Democratic governor.  Craig, who still claims it was all a misunderstanding, is from a state with a Republican governor who can just replace him with another Republican. Thus the outrage differential. 

    2. GOP candidate Mitt Romney, GOP-leaning paper the GJ Sentinel, right wing pundit Aaron Keith, GOP hatchet man/apologist Sean Hannity,CommonConservative.com

      This is the result of a two minute search/compilation of recent right-wing response to Larry Craig’s fall: Clinton!  Bill Clinton! Clinton! 

    3. …has already had the BC BJ thrown back at him as they were talking about Mr. Pottyfoot.

      When all logic fails, throw the name of Bill Clinton in the road.  If not for Monica, would have gone down in history as one of the greats, second tier.

  6. With $1 billion a week and no real progress to show, something is severely wrong.  All Bush has done is make the vague promise (so beloved of politicians) that something will be doe, things will be fixed, blah, blah blah.  With that kind of money, an actual plan would be nice.  And after 2 years, so would something accomplished.

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