Posted on 01/29/2006 6:51:06 AM PST by Uncle Sham
Political Horizons for Jan. 29
Baker’s relief bill deserves try
By JOHN LAPLANTE
Published: Jan 29, 2006
Ford to City: Drop Dead,” a legendary headline screamed in 1975, when a president refused to bail out New York City from financial disaster.
Change the president and the locale, and Louisiana hurricane victims might be forgiven for thinking the same thing.
After hemming and hawing for months about U.S. Rep. Richard Baker’s home-buyout bill, and never really saying what he had against it, Bush brushed it aside last week.
Only after aides revealed his opposition did Bush grant a one-paragraph explanation. It amounted to three things: Don’t create more bureaucracy; we already gave you people lots of money; and Louisiana doesn’t have a plan.
Baker and Gov. Kathleen Blanco countered the Baker bill is so important it amounts to “the plan.”
Blanco said she only really controls $6.2 billion in recovery money that will be stretched far too thin to aid owners of 200,000 destroyed or damaged homes.
She said opposing bureaucracy is an odd argument for any federal officials to make.
What she should argue is that Baker’s bill is a plan for people, not politicians.
Yes, the bill would set up a new bureaucracy called the Louisiana Recovery Corp., but this is not an open-ended promise to hand out money to politicians or write checks to the idle.
The LRC is supposed to be a hard-nosed business proposition. It would pay willing homeowners some, but not all, of the equity in their homes.
If they have a mortgage, the agency would pay it off, giving lenders back some, but not all, of their investment.
The agency would clean up the property and, working with local interests, market it to investors for redevelopment.
The LRC should take some decisions from politicians and give them to homeowners. They could take less and get on with their lives or keep their property in hopes of working out a better deal some other way. The agency would not take land against the owners’ will.
The corporation could transform many homeowners from helpless victims to people with some hope for the future. It could block a wave of foreclosures that might wipe out tens of thousands of families’ finances.
It could help head off statewide economic stagnation and spur speedy, organized recovery for communities that must come back for the state to recover.
Baker said he’s not giving up. He sees support in both chambers of Congress and says he has passed significant legislation over Bush’s objection before. But the opposition of a president whose party controls Congress is a major setback.
In fairness to Bush, Louisiana leaders made it easy for him to so casually shrug off the bill.
Our U.S. senators tried to grab $250 billion on sympathy instead of catalogued needs. The governor and Legislature found money for political projects during the crisis and so far have done little to adjust state government to the vastly different needs. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin famously made blackness, not prosperity, his top goal.
Some Louisiana leaders also exude an air of entitlement, even arrogance, demanding Washington immediately turn over as much taxpayer money as the state demands.
The Baker bill is not another toy for Louisiana politicians to play with or a well-intentioned program for them to screw up. It should actually bypass the politicians by dealing mostly with residents and bankers and developers.
Bush would appoint the managers of the agency, with Blanco suggesting only two. The U.S. treasury secretary would have final say over how much money the agency can borrow.
The bill is founded in Baker’s long expertise in the complexities of housing finance and the federal government’s long interest in affordable homes as a big part of the American dream.
Baker’s bill also is complex and in some ways unprecedented, and who knows how wily politicians, lawyers or speculators might try to abuse it?
Baker says he is willing to compromise. He should be. Louisiana is asking the nation to take a huge risk by borrowing up to $30 billion. Limits and controls are appropriate to minimize the chance of abuse.
Risks and reservations should not sink the bill without a proper airing.
The idea is worth more than months of foot-shuffling and a sudden brush-off by the president.
The 200,000 families that might directly benefit from it, and the 4.5 million Louisiana residents affected by their state’s continued crisis, deserve a hearing.
John LaPlante is Capitol bureau editor for The Advocate.
I doubt you'll get an answer to that. Everything Mississippi does is right and everything Louisiana does is wrong.
The purchase price to the agency would be 60% of pre-Katrina value. If this property is in an area where redevelopment is allowed, it will definitely be worth considerably more than the pre-Katrina level. The increase in property value, depending upon the circumstances at the time of redevelopment should be much closer to the overall purchase cost.
Some on this forum apparently feel that way. Frustrating isn't it?
I searched for information on Federal Government Aid to Mississippi's Gulf Coast residents and could not find any hard and fast figures. Do you have a link to the $150,000.00 figure?. I really wanted to see if there was a disparity in the amounts to New Orleans vs Mississippi.
you must be a carpenter...you sure hit that nail on the head.
You have a bunch of brain dead democrats running the show in Baton Rouge and all they are interested in is getting their hands on the money.
Thanks for the information.
Another Question, going back to my example, fair market value of home $75,000. Purchase price @ 60% = $45,000.00. Say conservatively $10,000.00 for demolition, cleanup, and preparation. $55,000.00 cost just for vacant land now. You state if the property is in an area where redevelopement is allowed, the property (just land) is going to be worth considerably more than pre-Katrina levels. Sorry for being a pain, but I'm just trying to understand. So, the vacant land is going to be more valuable than a pre-Katrina home?
I would hope the land could sell for the purchase price and improvements totalling $55,000.00, but that seems unrealistic to me.
Am I getting this right?
We need more info from the ones who wrote the bill. I don't know all of the details, but in general how it's supposed to work. There might be charges passed to the developers or things like that. Need more info. This isn't perfect but by far the best plan that has been suggested.
I know I won't. I don't get it either.
This idea makes a lot of sense. Thousands of homes built below sea level in Hurrican Alley were just a multi-billion dollar natural disaster waiting to happen.
............market it to investors for redevelopment.
This is where the idea does an about face back to stupid.
I agree, when I read the entire Bill, I really couldn't figure out exactly how it was going to work. I'd like it to be scored by CBO. Their the experts.
The low-lying areas that are determined to be uninhabitable will be turned into parks or wetlands. This plan helps make this a certainty.
I think that is what the 77,000 number is in reference to. I just know that we got hit by two major storms 3 weeks apart and that there are a lot of people whose homes were destroyed beyond repair. Most people did have insurance but the insurance companies are slow to respond and when they do it is often less than what it costs to repair them.
People are getting screwed over left and right. 99% of the people are out there working hard at getting their lives back on track but they are having to fight for every scrap they get.
I hear you, I really was unaware about how the block grants were being divided up. I can see why Baker put forth H.R. 4100 now. Not much I can personally do, regretfully, but I will now be watching what the Feds do to help out.
No comparison. Louisana is INFAMOUS for corruption. The state has had corrupt politicians since it entered the Union. In the dictionary next to corruption is the state of Louisiana.
Chicago is bad but the rest of IL is fairly conservative. IL used to have Republican Governors that served as a check on Chicago, although lately that hasn't been the case.
Don't be deluded into thinking that Louisiana is the only corrupt state. We at least send our crooked governors to jail not the White House and Senate. Remember the Clintons?
How incredibly ignorant. Such a tax is specifically forbidden by the U.S. Constitution.
Mary, Mary, Quite (To The) Contrary
InvestorsBusinessDaily ^ | 9-9-05
Posted on 09/10/2005 9:09:47 AM PDT by STARWISE
Politics: Louisiana's senior senator, whose brother is lieutenant governor and whose father was New Orleans' mayor, is blaming President Bush for "the staggering incompetence of the federal government." Come again?
It's understandable that on the Sept. 4 edition of ABC's "This Week," Mary Landrieu said of President Bush, "I might likely have to punch him — literally" if he or members of his administration made any more disparaging remarks about local authorities and their pre- and post-Katrina efforts. Some are and were family.
Brother Mitch Landrieu is lieutenant governor of Louisiana. Father "Moon" Landrieu was not only mayor of New Orleans, but also later became secretary of housing and urban development under President Carter.
(snip)
Despite Landrieu's complaints of budget cuts and paltry funding, the fact is that over the five years of the Bush administration, Louisiana has received more money — $1.9 billion — for Army Corps of Engineers civil works projects than any other state, and more than under any other administration over a similar period. California is a distant second with less than $1.4 billion despite a population more than seven times as large.
(snip)
The problem was at the local level. The ambitious plan fell apart when the state suspended the Levee Board's ability to refinance old bonds and issue new ones. As the Times-Picayune reported, Legislative Auditor Dan Kyle "repeatedly faulted the Levee Board for the way it awards contracts, spends money and ignores no-bid contract laws." Blocked by the state from raising local money, the federal matching funds went unspent. By 1998, Louisiana's state government had a $2 billion construction budget, but less than one-tenth of one percent, or $1.98 million, was dedicated to New Orleans levee improvements. By contrast, $22 million was spent that year to renovate a home for the Louisiana Supreme Court.
>snip
"Where did all the money go? Again, the Times-Picayune says much of the money went not to flood control, but to lawmakers' pet projects, from a $750 million for a new canal lock to a $2.5 million Mardi Gras fountain project that ran $600,000 over budget.
Nine months before Katrina, three top Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness officials were indicted by a federal grand jury in Shreveport and charged, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Louisiana, "with offenses related to the obstruction of an audit of the use of federal funds for flood mitigation opportunities throughout Louisiana."
"Such a tax is specifically forbidden by the U.S. Constitution."
Since you are so enlightened to the Consitution, why don't you back up your statement - "Such a tax is specifically forbidden by the U.S. Constituion" - and post your findings here. Since this tax is so "specifically" forbidden by our Constitution I'm sure you will find it clearly defined in text and definition.
I had no idea a major Corporation could NOT be taxed for doing business in one's STATE. And it's stated right there in the Constitution. ShazAAAAAMMM!!
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