Is there a worse public speaker in the Senate than Susan Collins (R-ME)? It must be the way she puts AN. EQUAL. EMPHAISIS. ON. EVERY. WORD. SHE. SPEAKS.
As if that weren’t painful enough, Collins’ latest news conference had her paired up with Sen. Joe “Lullaby” Lieberman (D-CT). This dynamic duo stole the show yesterday with *shocker* criticism of the Bush administration’s handling of Katrina.
As Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, it was Collins’ pleasure to annouce the committee’s new best seller, “Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared.” You heard right — according to the United States Senate, we’re still unprepared for a hurricance that hit last year. Actually, isn’t that pretty much par for the course for big government?
The big recommendation of the report is this: to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and replace it with “a stronger authority” called the National Preparedness and Response Authority (NPRA). So the Senate wants to fix a “bumbling bureaucracy” by creating an even larger bureaucracy; leave it to government to fix big government with bigger government.
Meanwhile, Collins’ Republican colleagues were hard at work drafting “solutions” to our nation’s “energy crisis.” The plan’s centerpiece involves mailing out $100 tax rebate checks to help taxpayers purchase gasoline. How does the Senate plan to offset tax revenue? According to Senator John Thune (R-SD), the legislation “would suspend a number of tax credits and royalty waivers received by oil corporations.”
Thune is going to cut taxes on the purchasers of fuel and make up for it by raising taxes on the producers of fuel. Whatever the merits of the tax breaks he proposes suspending, it seems clear that the producers would pass the costs on to the consumers.
In other words, the Senate wants to rob Peter to pay Peter.
4 comments so far
Mick, you’re dead on about Nancy and Joe and about fixing FEMA with red tape.
During the 1990s, FEMA–then a cabinet level agency working closely with stste and local governments. did solid work.Their response to flooding in the Midwest, The Oklahoma City bombing etc, are fine examples of how such an agency should work. BUT…
President Bush wanted to give more of the responsability for disaster relief back to the state and local governments, and moved FEMA into the bureaucratic boondoggle that is The D of Homeland S.
FEMA’s had problems before, but a lot of the kinks were worked out under Clinton– like it or not. Sadly, our oxymoron in chief, (GWB, not Rush) the big government conservative, put FEMA back in the doghouse.
FEMA is Un-Constitutional and should be dissolved and replaced with Nothing Federal.
Yes, because the people best equipped to deal with disaster are the victims of disaster.
FEMA worked— like MANY THINGS worked— with good management.
Un-con… Now that’s a stretch. No surprise, but a stretch.
Wiretapping, on the other hand… go to fearless leader!