Senate approves hurricane relief funds

Posted by R. Neal

The Senate approved $29 billion in hurricane relief funds:

Nearly four months after the maelstrom devastated New Orleans and much of the nearby Gulf Coast, the House was expected to vote Thursday on a final defense bill containing the storm assistance. The aid is mostly for reconstructing damaged buildings and aiding battered businesses and homeowners.

The Senate approved the measure 93-0 Wednesday night after the aid became entangled with - and then finally disengaged from - a fight over an unrelated effort to open oil drilling in an Alaska wildlife refuge.

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The $29 billion aid package is the result of two weeks of negotiating among lawmakers to nearly double Bush's initial funding request.

It includes:

• $11.5 billion in Community Development Block Grants to spur economic development and help homeowners without flood insurance rebuild or repair their homes.
   
• $4.4 billion for storm-related Defense Department expenses and facility damage.
   
• $2.9 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers to continue storm and flood repairs, begin reconstructing levees and accelerate studies on improving Gulf Coast flood protection.
   
• $2.8 billion to repair damaged roads, bridges and other transportation infrastructure.
   
• $1.6 billion for education, including $645 million for schools that took in students, $750 million for schools affected by the hurricanes and $200 million for higher education.
   
• $400 million for farmers and forests in Katrina disaster areas.

This is great news for residents of the Gulf region.

The vote was not without some last-minute drama related to the ANWR drilling issue that Chris mentioned here Monday:

It was a huge victory for environmentalists and Senate Democrats who argued that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would jeopardize the wild ecosystem that characterizes the refuge's coastal plain where polar bears, caribou, migratory birds and other wildlife thrive.

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who has fought unsuccessfully for a quarter-century to open the plain to oil drilling, had hoped to garner enough votes to overcome a threatened filibuster by attaching the measure to the defense bill that included tens of billions of dollars for troops in Iraq and for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Instead, Stevens found himself a few votes shy of getting his wish.

"This has been the saddest day of my life," Stevens said.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, R-Wash., an ardent defender of the refuge who led anti-drilling forces during the Senate debate, called Stevens' tactic "legislative blackmail" and "trickery" that united Democrats on the issue.

Republican leaders fell three votes short of the 60 votes needed to break the filibuster threat and advance the defense spending bill to a final vote, forcing GOP leaders to temporarily withdraw the bill and take out the drilling provision.

So that's some more good news. Of course, the Bush administration never passes up an opportunity for another tax cut:

President Bush on Wednesday signed legislation that provides $8.7 billion in tax breaks over 10 years for Gulf Coast businesses, a measure he said is part of the government's plan to help the region rebuild from destructive hurricanes.

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The measure, known as the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005, sets up a special enterprise zone in the coastal area where businesses and jobs were destroyed following the Aug. 29 storm.

The tax breaks for business investment are aimed at luring companies into the region and keeping those that are already there. Companies can use a tax credit to defray salaries if they kept employees on the payroll even while shut down due to storm damage.

There are also tax breaks for rebuilding infrastructure, rehabilitating buildings, and building low-income housing, and for rehabilitating toxic "brownfields". These sound like tax cuts that may actually be beneficial for a change.

Sadly, though, somebody's gotta pay:

Vice President Dick Cheney cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate on Wednesday to seal the deal on a $39.7 billion deficit-reduction package.

Five moderate Republicans broke ranks, joining 44 Democrats and an independent to oppose the first entitlement-spending growth cuts in nearly a decade.

Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, among the five GOP holdouts, called the bill "a cynical piece of legislation that punishes our most vulnerable citizens."

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The bill trims growth in Medicaid spending $4.8 billion and Medicare by $6.4 billion over five years. It also cuts $12.6 billion from student loan programs.

But wait, there's more:

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday passed a $602 billion bill that cuts funds for health, education and labor programs on the same day the Senate approved two separate rounds of cuts to health care programs for the poor.

By voice vote, the Senate approved the fiscal 2006 spending bill for the Health and Human Services, Labor and Education departments.

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Some high-profile programs would suffer spending cuts in the labor, health and education bill, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the "No Child Left Behind" education program that had been a priority of President George W. Bush.

Job training programs also would be cut, as well as children's health and Head Start preschool programs for poor children.

So, it's OK to run up hundreds of billions in deficits to help the people of Iraq (and Halliburton), but we have to make some sacrifices to help the victims of Katrina, "we" being children, old people, sick people, and the working poor.

OK, then.