Politics > House approves hurricane aid, sends to Bush

Meeting in an emergency session attended only by a few dozen of its 435 members, the House approved a spending bill identical to the one passed by the Senate late on Thursday.

Bush, who spent the day getting a first-hand look at the hurricane's destruction, was expected to sign the $10.5-billion bill into law on Friday.

Rep. Jerry Lewis, the California Republican who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said Hurricane Katrina's destruction in Louisiana and other Gulf Coast areas will take years to fix. "It will take nothing less than a domestic Marshall Plan to rebuild our roads and utilities and homes and businesses."

The Marshall Plan was the U.S. response to rebuilding western Europe following World War II.

Some former government officials have estimated that the hurricane repairs could end up costing the government around $30 billion.

Lewis said he could not yet estimate the total repair tab and indicated there could be at least two more spending bills in coming weeks and months.

"I don't know what they are going to be, but they are going to be historic," Lewis said of the additional costs for Congress, which already had been struggling with deficit spending.

In addition to rebuilding roads, utilities, military bases and other damaged facilities in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, the federal government is struggling to deliver emergency supplies of food and water and to rescue tens of thousands of stranded residents.

The costs are so staggering that Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said of the $10.5 billion bill being passed by the House, "This is just get-through-the-week stuff."

Bush administration officials have estimated the $10.5 billion could actually last about three weeks. But earlier this week, they significantly overestimated how long $2.4 billion that was already available would last.

Obey has been a vocal critic of the Bush administration's spending priorities and he made the connection between those and the suffering in the Gulf Coast.

As spending bills moved through the House this year, Obey lectured his colleagues about a shortage of funds for important domestic programs while billions were being spent on the war in Iraq and Bush tax cuts that helped the wealthy.

Obey decried the "absolute inadequacy of the federal response to what has occurred" and said "flood control projects in the Gulf were short- sheeted."

Republican Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the House majority whip, said Congress' priority should be in keeping federal rescue and relief agencies funded.

Longer-term, Blunt said he thought Congress probably will have to pass an economic stimulus package to ensure the hurricane's devastation, which has caused a spike in oil prices, does not choke off economic growth.

2005-09-03