Congress Watch: Landrieu praises Bush admission
Congress continues to sift through the political rubble cased by Hurricane Katrina with a flood of relief-related legislation piling up on both sides of the aisle and the desperate search for answers and a culprit still in full swing.
When President Bush took responsibility on Tuesday for shortcomings in the federal response to the disaster, by admitting that "Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government," he got some unexpected kudos on Capitol Hill.
"The president's comments today will do more to move our country forward from this tragedy than anything that has been said by any leader in the past two weeks," said Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat who had been very critical of the administration. "Accountability at every level is critical, and leadership begins at the top."
The other Louisiana senator, David Vitter, a freshman Republican, made his first appearance in the Capitol since the disaster and said that while the federal response was a failure, so was the state's response and preparation.
"Thank God that while bureaucrats failed, others succeeded," asserted Vitter. But in the face of individual heroism, Vitter said, Washington returned too quickly to its old habits.
"I saw horrific scenes in the days after the storm," Vitter said. "I smelled sweltering stenches, but what I sometimes heard coming out of Washington was more sickening: ridiculous arguments tying the suffering to the war in Iraq and the Reagan deficit; talk of boycotting bipartisan hearings and stonewalling independent commissions."
Vitter may have to learn to live with it, because in the minutes before he spoke on the Senate floor, West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd called on the Congress to re-examine the nation's priorities–and he was not shy about tying Katrina to the war in Iraq.
"Who among us has not wondered if the efforts to rescue and evacuate Gulf Coast residents suffered; suffered because too many national guardsmen have been detailed and detained in Iraq?" Byrd asked. "The events of the past several days seem to have reduced our much-touted American know-how and technology to little more than children's toys–strangely impotent in a real crisis."
Iraq is a mistake, Byrd said, and it is time to bring the troops home and use the money being spent there at home.
"Prudence demands that we reassess our posture," he said. "Our inept and pathetic, pitiful response to Katrina has underlined our vulnerability and writ them large before the world."
But the political writing is on the wall, too, and Vitter warned that Katrina should not be played for political advantage. "If we allow this matter to become just another partisan political football then we will have done one thing, and that is victimize the victims of Hurricane Katrina all over again."
The debate now rages on!