Congress is prepared to ax a $73-million package to provide shelter for disabled Hurricane Katrina victims, while the same bill sets aside $350 million to help Iraqi refugees.
U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., added the provision for post-Katrina housing assistance to a $212 billion bill to finance the Iraq war through the Bush administration and a month into the next president's term. The war legislation also would provide $100 million for Jordan's military and $50 million to Mexico's armed forces.
But Landrieu's effort to help physically and mentally disabled Katrina victims is in danger of being cut by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. Her staff points out that President Bush has signaled he will veto the war bill if it is not trimmed to around $108 billion.
Landrieu said the housing money is vital to a recovering city that has seen its homeless population double to an estimated 12,000 since the 2005 disaster.
"The bill also includes $6 billion for levees to protect us from future storms," said Landrieu in an e-mail. "I fully support giving our troops the funding they need and am concerned about the plight of Iraqi refugees. But we cannot neglect the most pressing emergency here at home along the Gulf Coast."
Pelosi's spokesman, Brendan Daly, said the speaker recognizes the urgent need for housing in New Orleans, but may still have to cut the provision as early as next week.
"She's very supportive of this and other things in the bill that we might not be able to include," said Daly. "The speaker has made the same point that we're spending more than $10 billion a month generally on the war, and we're not spending here at home."
Also pushing the spending cuts is the Blue Dog Coalition, 49 congressional Democrats who want strict spending policies to tame the national debt. Blue Dog leader Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Fla., did not comment directly on the prospect of helping Iraqi refugees while overlooking Katrina's displaced.
But he said in an e-mail Thursday that the $9-trillion national debt includes significant percentages financed by foreign banks.
"In this bill and others, the Blue Dogs and I are pushing for our priorities to be paid for, instead of borrowing the money from China that will have to be paid back with interest by our children and grandchildren," Boyd said. The Blue Dogs want money raised through tax increases or offset by cuts elsewhere.
The housing assistance funds would pay for 3,000 rent-aid vouchers for people who because of mental of physical disability have had trouble pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps after the August 2005 hurricane.
Katrina flooded 80 percent of New Orleans and killed 1,600 in Louisiana and Mississippi. In its wake, homelessness has become painfully visible.
A 150-person tent shanty has been evicted from a plaza in front of City Hall and has since migrated to a freeway underpass near the Louisiana Superdome. Tourists, professional sports teams, and Presidential candidate John Edwards have visited, sometimes equating the several blocks of tattered men and women to a refugee camp.
"When the Katrina disaster happened we couldn't help but notice here was forced displacement in the richest country in the world," said Joel Charny, vice president for policy for Refugees International, a humanitarian advocacy organization based in Washington D.C.
"You just don't want to be in a situation where it's either money for people who are disabled and really hurting in New Orleans, as opposed to money for people who are dislocated because of the war in Iraq," he said. "Our view, at the risk of sounding naive, is that money would be available for both."
Advocates have lobbied for housing vouchers for years. They were cut from the 2006 war supplemental under similar political pressures.
"I'm pleading with them not to negotiate with the lives of 3,000 of our most vulnerable citizens," said Valerie Keller co-chair of the Louisiana Supportive Housing Coalition. "People have been languishing in New Orleans for two and a half years."
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