Pelosi: With Hurricane Season Beginning Tomorrow, Needs of Katrina Survivors Still Unmet
Pelosi: With Hurricane Season Beginning Tomorrow, Needs of Katrina Survivors Still Unmet
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on the need to continue providing assistance to Hurricane Katrina survivors. Nine months after Katrina and with hurricane season beginning tomorrow, Pelosi's office released a report that outlines the incompetence and cronyism displayed by Republicans in response to Hurricane Katrina. Below are Pelosi's statement and a link to the report:
"As hurricane season begins tomorrow, the needs of so many Katrina survivors are still unmet and the system that failed them is still broken. Nine months after Hurricane Katrina, 40,000 families are still waiting for a FEMA trailer; only 4 percent of approved SBA disaster loans have been fully disbursed to small business owners in the region; and one-third of Katrina-impacted children living in FEMA trailer parks have been found to have a chronic illness such as asthma, with many having no access to health care.
"Unfortunately, over the last nine months, the Bush Administration has demonstrated the same incompetence and cronyism that it displayed in the days before and after Katrina struck. More than $1 billion in funding for Katrina efforts is estimated to have been wasted. While families wait for housing, 10,000 mobile homes have sat unused in the mud in Hope, Arkansas. Until recently, most of the large Katrina contracts went to large contractors that were outside the Gulf Coast region and had political connections to the Bush Administration. These contractors did little of the actual work, and yet were sometimes paid 15 times the actual cost of the job.
"FEMA is supposed to be the link between people and government in time of natural disasters. Katrina demonstrated that, under the Bush Administration, FEMA has been broken; it is still not an independent agency and the FEMA director still does not report directly to the President. Effective emergency response requires that the FEMA director not be shackled by bureaucracy.
"We must get Katrina survivors the help they still need and ensure that the waste, fraud, and abuse infecting Katrina contracts is finally eliminated. We must resolve that never again will FEMA fail to help Americans during a crisis."
http://democraticleader.house.gov/press/releases.cfm?pressReleaseID=1604