they had plenty of money to fix the levees with... but they were to busy building casinos and buying jet planes for the levee board to vacation in to use it for the levees.
And by the way, one of the levees that broke was brand new. And any levee they built would have only been rated for a cat 3 storm not a 5.
Also, who made the decision to build a levee system that couldn't withstand a cat 4 storm? I've read estimates of about $1 billion to build one that could withstand a cat 5 storm. It WOULD have been cheap insurance, don't you think?