Washington – Stung by criticism of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, President Bush on Tuesday promised to investigate his own administration’s emergency management, then readied a request for tens of billions of dollars in additional relief and cleanup funds.
Bush vowed to “find out what went right and what went wrong.”
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the military already has begun a “lessons- learned” assessment of its coordination with state and local governments. Key senators pushed for legislative changes that would allow Third World relief efforts to be emulated in the United States.
“Nothing will be the same again,” declared Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., who lost his Pascagoula home in the hurricane.
Just days after Congress approved a $10.5 billion emergency relief package, Bush informed congressional leaders of a request of up to $40 billion, making Katrina already the federal government’s most expensive domestic emergency ever. The package could be passed as early as today, Senate leadership and White House aides said.
Beyond money, congressional leaders ordered committee chairmen to draft any legislation that could remedy the problems revealed by the hurricane and its aftermath. And after nearly a week of recriminations, Washington slipped into an extraordinary bout of self-reflection.
“It is fair to say the overall response to this emergency could have and should have been better,” House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said.
Speaking to reporters after a Cabinet meeting, Bush said, “It’s very important for us to understand the relationship between the federal government, the state government and the local government when it comes to a major catastrophe. … We want to make sure that we can respond properly if there’s a WMD (weapons of mass destruction) attack or another major storm.”
Bush, who has called the response to the hurricane unacceptable only to amend that to say the results were not acceptable, offered no specifics on his planned investigation. Still, the call for a probe was unusual coming from a president who rarely admits mistakes.
House Republican leaders suggested that Congress launch one comprehensive examination of the disaster response, possibly a joint House-Senate investigation. But Senate committees were already moving forward. The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee will hold its own hearings next week to examine the federal disaster response.
Lawmakers trotted out dozens of ideas to respond to the mounting crisis, from offering Katrina survivors immediate access to health care through Medicaid to suspending the federal jet-fuel tax on airlines to tax breaks for entrepreneurs in the region.
But there was little immediate agreement on how to proceed and many notes of discord.
At the Pentagon, Rumsfeld said the growing involvement of troops in hurricane relief efforts will not diminish the military’s ability to sustain operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He noted that more than 300,000 Army National Guard and Air National Guard personnel remain available to help, if needed. He also sharply rejected the suggestion that the commitment of large numbers of troops to the Iraq conflict – including National Guard soldiers from Louisiana and Mississippi – had delayed the military’s response.
“Anyone who’s saying that doesn’t understand the situation,” he said.
