More Proof Bobby Jindal is a Dick
NEW ORLEANS - Years before Washington spent $787 billion on a national stimulus bill, it staged an unintended trial run in Louisiana, a huge injection of some $51 billion for which historians find few, if any, precedents in a single state.
The experiment is still playing out, but some indicators suggest that what occurred in Louisiana - dumping a large amount of reconstruction money into a confined space in the three and a half years since Hurricane Katrina - has had a positive outcome. The state’s unemployment rate of 5.7 percent in February was considerably below the national average of 8.1 percent, and it was the only state to see a drop in unemployment from December to January. It was also the only state with an increase in non-farm employment in February.
State economists specifically mention what one called “the ongoing building boom” from federal dollars as a main reason for the numbers. Largely a result of the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, construction projects have not dried up as they have elsewhere, and a few can even be seen in downtown New Orleans.
Construction has “really hung in there and done very well,” said Loren Scott, an emeritus professor of economics at Louisiana State University. “In most states construction is way down, but in ours it has been up.” The relatively low unemployment rate in Louisiana “tells you that the stimulus can have an effect,” Mr. Scott said.
However, the state’s Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, has positioned himself as a leading voice against the new stimulus bill, objecting to federal intervention in a state’s economy. He has threatened to reject $98 million in stimulus money intended to help Louisiana’s unemployed, echoing other Southern and Western governors who have turned such rejections into a conservative rallying cry.
But even as Mr. Jindal has criticized the stimulus bill, his own subordinates have continued to request money from Washington, notably in replacing Charity Hospital, which for generations served the poor in downtown New Orleans. State health officials, disregarding restoration work at Charity done in the months immediately after Hurricane Katrina, say they need a brand-new hospital and an additional $500 million; the Federal Emergency Management Agency has balked and is offering only $150 million.
Mr. Jindal amplified his anti-government-spending theme in a speech last month at the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner in Washington, saying Democrats believe that “the historic spending and expansion of government” is the way out of the economic crisis.
“They honestly believe that,” he said. “Conversely, we honestly believe that they are completely wrong, and that their path will have dire consequences for not only this time, but also for the future of America.”
In Louisiana, however, the consequences have hardly been dire - just the opposite, in fact. One of the governor’s leading aides, the state’s recovery director, Paul Rainwater, praised the federal relief effort in Louisiana in recent remarks to Congress, the day after his boss scorned federal help on national television in the Republican Party’s response to President Obama’s first address to Congress.
“No other state in the nation has been blessed with such generosity from Congress and the American people,” Mr. Rainwater said.
Referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a principal conduit for the aid that has flowed here, he said that “Louisiana is FEMA’s biggest ‘customer,’ so to speak, and the state’s Office of Facility Planning and Control is the largest single public-assistance applicant in American history.”
In the preceding 18 months, some $25 million a week had been given out in the public-assistance program, which helps local governments rebuild vital facilities, among other functions.
Over all, Mr. Rainwater said in an interview, $10 million a day was spent in the state in 2008, enough to draw contractors from around the country. In the last two weeks alone, he said, the state helped open six new apartment complexes, five of them in New Orleans.
“You take 10 million a day you didn’t have otherwise in your general fund, you can generate a lot of energy in your economy,” he said.
Because of that history, the governor’s anti-stimulus stance - as well as his threat to reject the stimulus package’s supplemental unemployment aid as an unwarranted burden on business interests - has provoked some skepticism and incomprehension here.
“The feedback I get is, it’s no longer an issue of big government vs. little,” said State Senator Eric LaFleur, a Democrat who wants to override the governor’s promised veto of the money. “If that money has been made available and we’ve paid for it, we should accept it. To do anything otherwise is purely political.”
The torrent of money flowing here after Hurricane Katrina has gone for projects small and grand, from $63,000 to the St. Theodore Holy Family Catholic School in Lake Charles and $96,000 for the Louisiana School for the Deaf in Baton Rouge to $11 million to the public housing authority in New Orleans and $160 million for the city’s sewer and water board. Billions of dollars more have been paid out in federally subsidized flood insurance, levee reconstruction and low-cost loans, including $7.9 billion for the Road Home program, which provided cash grants to people whose homes were damaged in the flooding.
The official list includes dozens upon dozens of projects, and the money is still being paid out - indeed, a constant lament of Louisiana officials is that it does not come fast enough.
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The experiment is still playing out, but some indicators suggest that what occurred in Louisiana - dumping a large amount of reconstruction money into a confined space in the three and a half years since Hurricane Katrina - has had a positive outcome. The state’s unemployment rate of 5.7 percent in February was considerably below the national average of 8.1 percent, and it was the only state to see a drop in unemployment from December to January. It was also the only state with an increase in non-farm employment in February.
State economists specifically mention what one called “the ongoing building boom” from federal dollars as a main reason for the numbers. Largely a result of the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, construction projects have not dried up as they have elsewhere, and a few can even be seen in downtown New Orleans.
Construction has “really hung in there and done very well,” said Loren Scott, an emeritus professor of economics at Louisiana State University. “In most states construction is way down, but in ours it has been up.” The relatively low unemployment rate in Louisiana “tells you that the stimulus can have an effect,” Mr. Scott said.
However, the state’s Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, has positioned himself as a leading voice against the new stimulus bill, objecting to federal intervention in a state’s economy. He has threatened to reject $98 million in stimulus money intended to help Louisiana’s unemployed, echoing other Southern and Western governors who have turned such rejections into a conservative rallying cry.
But even as Mr. Jindal has criticized the stimulus bill, his own subordinates have continued to request money from Washington, notably in replacing Charity Hospital, which for generations served the poor in downtown New Orleans. State health officials, disregarding restoration work at Charity done in the months immediately after Hurricane Katrina, say they need a brand-new hospital and an additional $500 million; the Federal Emergency Management Agency has balked and is offering only $150 million.
Mr. Jindal amplified his anti-government-spending theme in a speech last month at the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner in Washington, saying Democrats believe that “the historic spending and expansion of government” is the way out of the economic crisis.
“They honestly believe that,” he said. “Conversely, we honestly believe that they are completely wrong, and that their path will have dire consequences for not only this time, but also for the future of America.”
In Louisiana, however, the consequences have hardly been dire - just the opposite, in fact. One of the governor’s leading aides, the state’s recovery director, Paul Rainwater, praised the federal relief effort in Louisiana in recent remarks to Congress, the day after his boss scorned federal help on national television in the Republican Party’s response to President Obama’s first address to Congress.
“No other state in the nation has been blessed with such generosity from Congress and the American people,” Mr. Rainwater said.
Referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a principal conduit for the aid that has flowed here, he said that “Louisiana is FEMA’s biggest ‘customer,’ so to speak, and the state’s Office of Facility Planning and Control is the largest single public-assistance applicant in American history.”
In the preceding 18 months, some $25 million a week had been given out in the public-assistance program, which helps local governments rebuild vital facilities, among other functions.
Over all, Mr. Rainwater said in an interview, $10 million a day was spent in the state in 2008, enough to draw contractors from around the country. In the last two weeks alone, he said, the state helped open six new apartment complexes, five of them in New Orleans.
“You take 10 million a day you didn’t have otherwise in your general fund, you can generate a lot of energy in your economy,” he said.
Because of that history, the governor’s anti-stimulus stance - as well as his threat to reject the stimulus package’s supplemental unemployment aid as an unwarranted burden on business interests - has provoked some skepticism and incomprehension here.
“The feedback I get is, it’s no longer an issue of big government vs. little,” said State Senator Eric LaFleur, a Democrat who wants to override the governor’s promised veto of the money. “If that money has been made available and we’ve paid for it, we should accept it. To do anything otherwise is purely political.”
The torrent of money flowing here after Hurricane Katrina has gone for projects small and grand, from $63,000 to the St. Theodore Holy Family Catholic School in Lake Charles and $96,000 for the Louisiana School for the Deaf in Baton Rouge to $11 million to the public housing authority in New Orleans and $160 million for the city’s sewer and water board. Billions of dollars more have been paid out in federally subsidized flood insurance, levee reconstruction and low-cost loans, including $7.9 billion for the Road Home program, which provided cash grants to people whose homes were damaged in the flooding.
The official list includes dozens upon dozens of projects, and the money is still being paid out - indeed, a constant lament of Louisiana officials is that it does not come fast enough.
sauce