Why the unspent funds for the levee wouldn’t have helped

Writing at FrontPage Magazine, Ben Johnson picks up on the same theme I’ve been exploring here. “IT’S OFFICIAL,” he announces in capital letters, “THE AMERICAN LEFT NOW BELIEVES GEORGE W. BUSH IS GOD.” Which means, Bush is capable of delivering all goods to all people, so if he fails to deliver all goods to all people, he’s indifferent or malicious. This bizarre idea is not just a result of leftist Bush-hatred, but of the general loss of understandng of our federal system, in which the local and state authorities have the primary responsibility for dealing with weather emergencies and natural disasters.

Johnson’s piece underscores another key point. The possibility of a category 4 or 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans had been thought so unlikely (it would only happen once every 200 years according to the head of the Army Corps of Engineers) that the authorities had decided it would not be worthwhile spending the billions required to make the levee proof against such a storm. One can certainly criticize that decision (consider the hundreds of billions made necessary now by the failure to spend a few billion in the past), but it was a decision apparently shared by the city, the state, and the Army Corp of Engineers going back many years—and in any case President Bush had nothing to do with it. What this means is that the monies that were cut from recent levee work were only earmarked for maintaining the levee at its current level, not for making it withstand a category 4 or 5 storm. So even if that money had been spent, it wouldn’t have prevented the disaster.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 06, 2005 07:12 AM | Send