<p>I don’t see a blank check there or a promise not to rebuild or relocate NOLA partailly elsewhere. Building in a flood/hurricane zone is folly.</p>
<p>I agree with you. What I don’t see, however, is the President living up to his stated commitments. (Besides the cut for the Corps of Engineers, the Prez proposes a 29.9% cut in housing and urban development.)</p>
<p>I believe Katrina relief is under a separate line item and substantial.</p>
<p>Building low-income housing in communities where NOLA folks have gone to live is not Katrina relief.</p>
<p>"But the administration said that its post-Katrina work is far from done. John Paul Woodley, assistant secretary for the corps, said that this week he would begin talking to lawmakers about a new supplemental spending bill – the fourth since Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29 – that would include money to shore up New Orleans’ hurricane protection. </p>
<p>Specifically, Woodley said money would be sought for armoring levees, which are already being rebuilt to pre-Katrina strength. It would also include, he said, money for new pumping stations near Lake Pontchartrain and closing off drainage canals to reduce the kind of storm surge that is believed to have contributed to the breaches last year that left 80 percent of the city under water. The request would be part of the $18 billion in new spending the administration announced last week. </p>
<p>“There is a great deal of money, much money, a large amount,” Woodley said Monday. “I want to get the works we have in place as robust as they can be to protect against . . . almost all storms, against catastrophic inundation.” </p>
<p>In the wake of levee failures in New Orleans, the corps’s budget contains $20 million to conduct an inventory and evaluation of all levees around the nation. But overall, the agency’s budget is being cut by about 11 percent. Corps officials said the figure is misleading because so much money was spent last year on Iraq and hurricane protection in Louisiana.</p>
<p>perhaps Belgium and Switzerland can send some “chocolate”… :)</p>
<p>Providing housing in other cities to former residents is certainly Katrina relief. Where is it written that they have to stay on the same patch of flooded ground they used to occupy?</p>
<p>But there is nothing in the budget to provide it (other than the little for trailers in the flooded areas, and a small amount for the end of the hotel program. No initiatives (that I saw) in the housing and urban development budgets at all, which show a 29.9% cut. (Don’t just look at the soundbites - read the budget.)</p>
<p>There is more than one “budget”. Actual spending bills are many and do the real funding. They may want to treat this as a special spending item outside the normal continuing budget.</p>