The entire cost of rebuilding for Katrina damage could be paid for instead of borrowing by taking the pork out of these bills.
And Republicans should suck it up and be the first ones to suggest just that, and then move forward to do it. They are losing voters every day with their big spending. I live in an area that attracts mostly retirees and that is ALL they are talking about and most of them have been voting Republican for over 30-40 years.
I thought that Dept of Commerce and Dept of Education and NEA and PBS were supposed to be the first items on the chopping block after the 1994 Republican congressional takeover....ah well, once a pork-lover, always a pork-lover....
Self ping for afternoon.
Funny. I could have sworn I thought I heard the President state Congress should cut its expenditures to pay for the costs. You would think the WSJ would know that rather than create pretense of opposition where it doesn't exist.
Look, here is the reality. The President will not stand in the way of cuts. He won't stand in the way of pork. If Congress sent him reduced budgets, he'd sign them just as he's signed their spending sprees. He wouldn't VETO either way. The obstacle for fiscal responsibility is/has been Congress. The question I have is whether they'll finally get serious about this, and I'll be interestedly following the submission of areas to cut spending given today.
After cutting the pork, there should be an arbitrary percentage cut from all federal spending to the states. Say 10%. Let the states decide how to apportion the cuts.
Looks like this is gathering some support:
http://www2.dailynews.com/news/ci_3047263
Hopefully today (Wednesday) the official plan and its sponsors will be unveiled.
It is stupid folly to rebuild the N.O. mass suicide pit. For 300 years it has been obvious that N.O. was constructed in the wrong place. Even the French built on the highest ground.
The 300+ mile levy system is constructed with high silt soil. Silt lacks cohesion to hold itself to gether, a soil mechanics state of nature. The current levies have been soaking in water for weeks; they shall tend to slump apart= failure. Making them higher doesn't adrees the reason that they shall fail, not to mention the catastrophic riska from the flooding Miss. River and storms. Are we going to rebuild all levies from the bottom up with well engineered mateials?
It isn't clever to try to out-engineer Mother Nature. It is not even "right" - because it is idiotic. It is so stupid and wasteful of this significant fraction of $1 trillion of our tax dollars, all over a silly emotional edifice complex in the vain attempt to buy votes over a dying city.
MOVE the dam city! Keep the French Qtr. as an adult theme park. Keep the port with a road for the bedroom communities above sea level, Fools.
Terrorists can easily and cheaply blow the dikes, any dikes, costing our economy trillion$. Why isn't our federal government stating these obvious facts, especially in light of the long established criminal corruptions and profoundly incompetent Blanc-hole, Landrieu, and Admiral Nagin families? How stupid are we going to be? We cannot afford these death counts with hundreds of billion$ after hundreds of billions to keep rebuilding on this obscene folly.
Move over Atlantis, New Orleans has died, and should. If rebuilt, N.O. shall die its second death as a toxic Frankencity.