GOP Using Katrina to Justify Unrelated Right-Wing Agenda

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Tue, 13 Sep 2005 13:54:51 -0500

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GOP Using Katrina to Justify Unrelated Right-Wing Agenda

 

http://www.workingforchange.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry & entry=4AA907B4-C170-FE\

B8A75753D91B7B2E1D

 

 

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, it now appears the Republican Party

has made a strategic decision to use the disaster to push its

far-right ideological agenda - no matter how off-topic it is. In the

last two weeks, we've seen top Republicans use the disaster to justify

all sorts of unrelated and fringe-conservative proposals. Here are

just a few:

 

GOP USES KATRINA TO JUSTIFY PRIVATIZING SOCIAL SECURITY: CongressDaily

last week reported that the White House is using the disaster on the

Gulf Coast to justify its scheme to privatize Social Security. Bush

spokesman Trent Duffy " asserted that the vast spending that would be

required to address the hurricane's impact adds to the need to change

Social Security, which threatens to strain the budget in coming

years. " This, even though Bush's Social Security plan would actually

run up costs, not save money.

 

GOP USES KATRINA TO JUSTIFY RELIGIOUS RIGHT'S AGENDA: The New York

Times reported last week that " Republican leaders in Congress and some

White House officials see opportunities in Hurricane Katrina to

advance longstanding conservative goals like giving students vouchers

to pay for private schools [and] paying churches to help with

temporary housing " - both key tenets of the religious right's agenda.

 

GOP USES KATRINA TO LOWER THE MINIMUM WAGE: Reuters reports that last

week President Bush signed an executive order suspending the

Davis-Bacon law in the Gulf Coast. The law forces federal contractors

to pay their workers the prevailing wages (aka. the minimum wage).

Now, contractors like Halliburton and Bechtel, which Bush once again

is giving no-bid contracts to for cleanup, can take billions in

taxpayer cash while undermining workers' wages.

 

GOP USES KATRINA TO JUSTIFY MORE GIVEAWAYS TO OIL INDUSTRY: Just weeks

after passing a massive energy bill that gave profiteering oil

companies billions in new tax breaks, the Hill Newspaper reports that

congressional Republicans are planning to use the Gulf Coast disaster

as an excuse to push another energy bill.

 

When you look at this list, it seems the only thing Republicans aren't

using Hurricane Katrina to justify is improving the government's

crisis response, and re-evaluating conservatives'

tax-cuts-at-all-costs agenda that has so severely underfunded

government services/disaster preparation as to allow this calamity to

get so bad.

 

Sources:

CongressDaily on White House using Katrina to justify SS privatization:

http://www.workingforchange.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry & entry=3610DEDD-DB1B-6E\

84-D509ACCA668A6A77

New York Times on GOP using Katrina to justify religious right's agenda:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/politics/10policy.html

Reuters on Bush signing executive order undermining minimum wage laws:

http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/08/news/economy/katrina_wages.reut/

Wall Street Journal on Bush giving no-bid reconstruction contracts to

corporate cronies:

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112648366967837577,00.html?mod=politics_prima\

ry_hs

The Hill Newspaper on GOP using Katrina to justify another energy bill:

http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/090805/gop.html