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Louisiana Governor: Bush Forgetting Katrina    [

    New Orleans Not Part of Bush's Speech
    By Jennifer Loven
    The Associated Press

    Wednesday 24 January 2007

    Washington - New Orleans is still a mess and the pace of recovery across the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Katrina's strike remains achingly slow after 17 months. But none of this captured President Bush's attention on the year's biggest night for showcasing policy priorities.

    In the president's State of the Union speech last year, delivered just five months after the disaster, the devastation merited only 156 words out of more than 5,400.

    On Tuesday night, the president spoke for almost exactly as long before a joint session of Congress. But Katrina received not a single mention.

    By contrast, in the days ahead of the president's address, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia compared the U.S. money being spent on Iraqi reconstruction with the fraction committed to the Gulf Coast rebuilding. And, chosen to give the Democratic response to Bush on Tuesday, Webb brought up the continuing struggle of Katrina victims right away, listing "restoring the vitality of New Orleans" just behind education and health care among his party's most pressing priorities, according to the text of his speech distributed in advance.

    The disaster did rate one representative with a good seat for Bush's speech.

    Craig Cuccia, co-founder of Reconcile New Orleans, was one of two dozen guests seated in first lady Laura Bush's box above the House chamber. Cuccia's nonprofit youth organization helps get kids off the streets and into the hospitality industry by giving them jobs and training at its Cafe Reconcile located in Central City, one of New Orleans' toughest neighborhoods.

    Spared Katrina's widespread flooding, the restaurant was among the city's first businesses to reopen its doors and served emergency workers, first responders, construction crews and returning residents.

    But Cuccia's presence at the State of the Union address had as much or more to do with Mrs. Bush's drive to help at-risk youth, particularly boys, stay out of gangs and other trouble. The first lady extended the invitation after meeting Cuccia on a visit to the cafe earlier this month.

    Katrina's relative absence from the president's public radar screen is not new.

    Seeking to recover from criticism of his initial reaction to the storm, the president focused intensively on the Gulf Coast in the weeks and months after Katrina hit. But that attention level quickly dropped off, and he hardly mentions the region now. His only visit there in the last eight months was to mark one year since the storm's strike in August.

    "This anniversary is not an end. And so I come back to say that we will stand with the people of southern Louisiana and southern Mississippi until the job is done," he pledged then.

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    Louisiana Governor: Bush Forgetting Katrina
    By Cain Burdeau
    The Associated Press

    Wednesday 24 January 2007

    Gov. Kathleen Blanco angrily criticized President Bush on Wednesday for not mentioning 2005's destructive hurricanes in his State of the Union speech, and said Louisiana is being shortchanged in federal recovery funding for political reasons.

    "I guess the pains of the hurricane are yesterday's news in Washington," Blanco said.

    "But for us it's still very real, very real, and it's something that we live every single day," the governor said. "But we will continue to fight, and we will continue to come on, and we will effect a recovery."

    Mayor Ray Nagin echoed Blanco's disappointment at Bush's omission of New Orleans' recovery from Hurricane Katrina, but he cautioned against reopening political rifts that developed after the storm.

    "We're 18 months into this thing. I'm tired of complaining and bellyaching," the mayor said. "We're going to take whatever nickels we have, whatever pennies we have, whatever dollars we have, and we're going to stretch it, and we're going to make this recovery work."

    The White House had no immediate comment on Blanco's remarks.

    Blanco accused the White House of repeatedly delivering less money than Louisiana has needed to repair the damage to housing, schools and hospitals. She said Mississippi has received much more help.

    "I just want an end to the disparities, once and for all," the governor said.

    She said Louisiana's unfair treatment set the state's recovery back by six months.