Grover Gets His Wish

“My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”  Grover Norquist to NPR in a profile of Norquist done by Mara Liasson for the Bob Edward’s show in May of 2001.

Grover Norquist, president of the Americans for Tax Reform, may have gotten his wish this week.  Norquist is the leading advocate for shrinking the size of the federal government, and has been the architect of many of the Bush Administration’s fiscal policies.  It is his and others cavalier attitude towards government services that may have led to the disaster in New Orleans.

Will Bunch, the senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News, has a great article, Why the Levee Broke, that outlines the failure of the Bush Administration to adequately fund levee improvements on Lake Pontchartrain due to federal tax cuts and the war in Iraq.

Here is one quote from the article:

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to this Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness:

The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.

 

The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.

 

"The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them interest."

Well Grover, I think you got your wish -- we are drowning.

Read more at Bunch’s blog, Attytood, or at AlterNet.