Not Again
A battered Gulf coast and a storm season for the ages
Who pays? Still, larger questions loomed, with deep political and philosophical implications. Residents along the Gulf Coast applauded Washington's forward-looking approach to Rita, but in its eagerness to make amends for Katrina and embark on a spending spree that could ultimately exceed $200 billion, the White House has so far failed to provide either context or rationale. How will the nation pay for it all? Bigger deficits? Higher taxes? Both? And what kind of precedent, if any, is the administration setting? Clearly, many Americans agree with the president's earlier statement about Katrina, that some calamities are simply too big for state and local officials to be expected to handle alone. But how big is too big? When does Washington step in, and when does it stay on the sidelines? Are taxpayers across the nation going to be expected to open their wallets for every wildfire in the West, flood in the East, and tornado in the Plains states?
Such questions will be addressed in good time, no doubt. But for now, hurricane season has another two months to run, and historically about a quarter of major storms happen during October. Whatever happens, stormwise, this one's already in the record books. In the off-season, baseball buffs jaw long into the night about monster home runs and wicked strikeouts. It's called the "hot stove" league, kids learning at the knees of their elders as the timeless wisdom is dispensed around the hearth. If there's a parallel in the world of violent weather, and surely there must be, they'll be talking about the hurricane season of aught-five for decades to come.
With Angie C. Marek and Betsy Querna
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