How the Katrina catastrophe proves that conservatives'
tax cut zealotry has left america vulnerable to disaster

From In These Times courtesy of the Daily Kos:

Overall, Bush's first budget introduced in February 2001 proposed more than half a billion dollars worth of cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers for the 2002 fiscal year. To be sure, these budget cuts were one in a number of cuts to public priorities like health care, human services, infrastructure and job training.

And it is true that the cuts to the corps came as the agency was being legitimately criticized: Some of its projects in recent years had run roughshod over environmental concerns, and others had been unnecessarily expensive products of congressional pork. However, instead of reforming the corps and getting it back on track, the White House used the criticism as a cover to gut the entire agency. The cuts were so deep, Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) broke ranks with her party and penned a nationally-syndicated op-ed in April 2001 saying that "lives very likely will be lost."

Consider just a few of the specific examples: In the same budget that provided more than a trillion dollars in tax cuts, Bush proposed providing only half of what his own administration officials said was necessary to sustain the critical Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Project (SELA)--a project started after a 1995 rainstorm flooded 25,000 homes and caused a half billion dollars in damage. This 2001 budget proposal came in the same year that, according to the Houston Chronicle, federal officials publicly ranked the potential damage to New Orleans by a major hurricane "among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country."

Similarly, less than two weeks after Bush signed his tax cut on June 7, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that "despite warnings that it could slow emergency response to future flood and hurricane victims, House Republicans stripped $389 million in disaster relief money from the budget."

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Of course, there is some truth to the notion that taxation, in some circumstances, can go to far, or be unjust, or needlessly retard the economy. That's only common sense. Government is no more than the individuals who run it, and, like all human beings, such individuals are prone to error and corruption. However, the Conservative Movement has completely lost sight of the common sense that once drove it to demand responsible governance. Tax cuts for their own sake is now the principle that rules the minds of American conservatives, and that's really bad because taxes are absolutely necessary for government to provide the environment in which civilization is able to exist. That's ultimately what this is all about. Do we want civilization or not? Conservatives, most of them anyway, aren't even able to conceptualize the issue in such terms, but it doesn't matter because the results are the same: without taxes accompanied by wise spending, civilization does not exist. Katrina proved that. If conservative rule continues, we can kiss this nation goodbye.

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