From Campus Progress:
Two and a half years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf region, states like Mississippi are still struggling to provide relief for their residents. [MSNBC]
For example, in Mississippi, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is asking for another $39 million in the new budget to help the elderly and disabled who were forced from their homes after Katrina.
And after he was elected to take outgoing Sen. Trent Lott’s place last month, new Sen. Roger Wicker promised, “It’s not unrealistic to think that the Congress will provide another billion dollars, that’s billion with a ‘b,’ for additional appropriations involving the coast.”
Waaaaait. What about the tons of money the state has already received to help victims of the storm, you ask?
Gov. Haley Barbour is spending it on lots of other, non-Katrina stuff. Two weeks ago, for example, he took $600 million from post-Katrina relief funds and decided to spend it on improvements to the state’s port.
Today he wants to take another $25 million of recovery money to build a new four-lane highway to help a Toyota plant 300 miles away from the Gulf (and located nowhere near the storm zone.) [MSNBC]
A little more about this money:
After the storm hit, the federal government told Mississippi it would pay some of its Medicaid bills so the state could take the money they’d normally spend on the program —about $368 million—to make a Katrina fund.
So Barbour took the money from Medicaid… yet didn’t spend it on Katrina aid… and now wants to build Toyota a new road.
Reilly Morse, with the Mississippi Center for Justice: “Taking money from Medicaid and putting it into a road? Is there no low-income need so sacred that Gov. Barbour won’t rob it?”
It’s not like the program that provides medical assistance to the poor is exactly flush with cash. The state’s Medicaid program is now broke, broke, broke. The state faces a $90 million shortfall between now and June 30 and a whopping $170 million shortfall next year.
Check it out at Campus Progress!
Pull up bootstraps and get to work. In the good ole days a tornado destroyed my home and left me homesless at 8 yrs. old. We did just fine without govt. , thank you. Get off the coast if you can't afford storm damage. Where is your intestinal fortitude? There is no social security the republicans spent it. Get in line with aliens, who will soon be picking cotton in ms.
ReplyDeleteYeah... Show me your bootstraps.
ReplyDeleteThe money was appropriated for housing.
It's instead being used for other purposes.
That's the problem.
Get in line. Line up. The government is broke. Repubs spent it. I am donating my tax rebate to the homo/pedophile senator rehab center.
ReplyDeleteThe homo/pedophiles are actually in the House of Representatives. You may wanna stop payment on your check- that charity may be a sham.
ReplyDeleteMy bootstraps have rhinestones. I pull myself up with bling.