A CAN'T-DO GOVERNMENT By Paul Krugman

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Fri, 02 Sep 2005 00:23:22 -0700

A CAN'T-DO GOVERNMENT

 

 

A CAN'T-DO GOVERNMENT

By Paul Krugman

New York Times

September 2, 2005

 

 

<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/opinion/02krugman.html>http://www.nytimes.com\

/2005/09/02/opinion/02krugman.html

 

 

 

Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most

likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New

York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New

Orleans. " The New Orleans hurricane scenario, " The Houston Chronicle wrote

in December 2001, " may be the deadliest of all. " It described a potential

catastrophe very much like the one now happening.

 

So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard

questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a

thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability.

 

First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina

hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina

could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd

expect

from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are

dead or

dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too

poor

or too sick to get out without help - and help wasn't provided. Many have

yet to receive any help at all.

 

There will and should be many questions about the response of state and

local governments; in particular, couldn't they have done more to help the

poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a

stunning lack

of both preparation and urgency in the federal government's response.

 

Even military resources in the right place weren't ordered into

action. " On

Wednesday, " said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss.,

" reporters

listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior

High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force

personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing

basketball

and performing calisthenics! "

 

Maybe administration officials believed that the local National Guard

could

keep order and deliver relief. But many members of the National Guard and

much of its equipment - including high-water vehicles - are in Iraq. " The

National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland

security mission, " a Louisiana Guard officer told reporters several weeks

ago.

 

Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003 the

Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including

work on sinking levees. " The corps, " an Editor and Publisher article says,

citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, " never

tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as

well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -

was the reason for the strain. "

 

In 2002 the corps' chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired,

after he criticized the administration's proposed cuts in the corps'

budget,

including flood-control spending.

 

Third question: Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness?

The administration has, by all accounts, treated the emergency management

agency like an unwanted stepchild, leading to a mass exodus of experienced

professionals.

 

Last year James Lee Witt, who won bipartisan praise for his leadership of

the agency during the Clinton years, said at a Congressional hearing:

" I am

extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and

respond to disasters has been sharply eroded. I hear from emergency

managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day

that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared. "

 

I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the

military

wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same

reason

nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control

was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate

armor.

 

At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious

about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war,

but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending

on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.

 

Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody

expected the

breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about

exactly that risk.

 

So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do

government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes

those excuses, Americans are dying.

 

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