David Greenberg: Bush Is No FDR (Not Even a Hoover)
IT LOOKED AT FIRST as if Hurricane Katrina would be a turning point. The government's failure at all levels to respond to the plight of New Orleans—to say nothing of the racial and class stratification that the storm laid bare—seemed to have issued a wake-up call.
Believers in activist government took heart. As George W. Bush's approval ratings hit new lows, he spoke of spending generously to repair the Gulf Coast. Senate Republican leader Bill Frist shelved plans to abolish the estate tax, which suddenly appeared like an indulgence. Amid Democratic calls for a ''Marshall Plan for the cities"—an idea floating around since at least 1967—some conservatives showed willingness to commit to greater spending on our urban problems.
The era of small government seemed to be over.
But expectations of a return to the big-government philosophy that held sway for much of the last century turned out to be misty-eyed hope, not clear-eyed prophecy. The plans President Bush has outlined for rebuilding the region amount to a windfall for corporate interests, with government getting out of the way. A ''Gulf Opportunity Zone" would consist largely of tax breaks to businesses, including casino chains. Private schools stand to pocket taxpayer funds through education vouchers doled out to displaced students. No-bid contracts have enriched favored corporations, such as the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. The administration has allowed private contractors to pay workers wages that would normally be illegally low. And new taxes, Bush has vowed, are off the table, while Congressional Republicans aim to offset the plan's costs by slashing other domestic programs....
[After the 1927 great flood that devastated Mississippi communities President Calvin Coolidge (reluctantly) appointed Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover to lead a recovery effort. The following year Congress passed landmark legislation providing for federal responsibility for flood control.]
With the New Deal, the public came to expect a vigorous role for Washington in disaster relief, as in so many other areas. In his first hundred days, FDR passed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, which set up a federal corporation to deliver hydroelectric power to the region's impoverished citizens. With its dams and other infrastructure, the TVA also aimed to control flooding and stop soil erosion. Roosevelt saw the TVA as a brash experiment, designed to unite ''industry and agriculture and forestry and flood prevention...[in] a unified whole over thousands of miles so that we can afford better opportunities and better places for millions of yet unborn."...
As faith in government crested, however, a conservative backlash against activist, technocratic Washington policies set in. Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 signaled that a conservative anti-government ideology had overthrown, or at least come to challenge seriously, what were now hoary New Deal orthodoxies.
This newfound aversion to ambitious social programs may explain why many recent traumas that promised to bring bold federal action ultimately failed to do so. Such false heralds date back at least to the Kerner Commission of 1967 and '68, convened after the urban riots of the preceding summers, which warned that American society was drifting ''toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal." Despite high hopes, it yielded no lasting federal programs. Neither did the Los Angeles riots of 1992. Nor have such national ordeals as the energy shocks of the 1970s or the health-care crisis of recent times....
Although observers have contrasted the Bush administration's swift reaction to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 with its foot-dragging after Katrina, in fact 9/11 also represented a missed opportunity for action. Just after the attacks, Americans found succor in the presence of such agencies as FEMA, the FAA, and the EPA, which provided a kind of Alphabet Soup for the soul, a comforting reassurance that the government would come to the rescue.
Yet no far-sighted domestic vision ever emerged. Apart from waging war, Bush's main focus was to claim that 9/11 further justified his tax cuts....
Meanwhile, uncritical expressions of faith in private enterprise have pervaded our discourse. Newscasts celebrated heroic individual missions to round up supplies for the victims or retrieve stranded New Orleanians, while press reports highlighted Wal-Mart's donation of $17 million in cash to relief efforts (even though it offered some displaced employees only three days' pay). Where government failed, these stories implied, the private sphere triumphed.
Of course, recent reports have noted that many private firms performed miserably as well. Tenet Health Care owns the hospital where 45 patients died. Entergy, a utility company, has been tardy in restoring power. Carnival Cruise Lines is charging the government luxury rates to house evacuees and recovery workers on its ships.
More fundamentally, the stories suggesting that the market works better than the government take for granted everything that the government alone can do. Private efforts by themselves did not, and cannot, respond adequately to a catastrophe as huge and complex as Katrina. ...
Read entire article at Boston Globe
Believers in activist government took heart. As George W. Bush's approval ratings hit new lows, he spoke of spending generously to repair the Gulf Coast. Senate Republican leader Bill Frist shelved plans to abolish the estate tax, which suddenly appeared like an indulgence. Amid Democratic calls for a ''Marshall Plan for the cities"—an idea floating around since at least 1967—some conservatives showed willingness to commit to greater spending on our urban problems.
The era of small government seemed to be over.
But expectations of a return to the big-government philosophy that held sway for much of the last century turned out to be misty-eyed hope, not clear-eyed prophecy. The plans President Bush has outlined for rebuilding the region amount to a windfall for corporate interests, with government getting out of the way. A ''Gulf Opportunity Zone" would consist largely of tax breaks to businesses, including casino chains. Private schools stand to pocket taxpayer funds through education vouchers doled out to displaced students. No-bid contracts have enriched favored corporations, such as the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. The administration has allowed private contractors to pay workers wages that would normally be illegally low. And new taxes, Bush has vowed, are off the table, while Congressional Republicans aim to offset the plan's costs by slashing other domestic programs....
[After the 1927 great flood that devastated Mississippi communities President Calvin Coolidge (reluctantly) appointed Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover to lead a recovery effort. The following year Congress passed landmark legislation providing for federal responsibility for flood control.]
With the New Deal, the public came to expect a vigorous role for Washington in disaster relief, as in so many other areas. In his first hundred days, FDR passed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, which set up a federal corporation to deliver hydroelectric power to the region's impoverished citizens. With its dams and other infrastructure, the TVA also aimed to control flooding and stop soil erosion. Roosevelt saw the TVA as a brash experiment, designed to unite ''industry and agriculture and forestry and flood prevention...[in] a unified whole over thousands of miles so that we can afford better opportunities and better places for millions of yet unborn."...
As faith in government crested, however, a conservative backlash against activist, technocratic Washington policies set in. Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 signaled that a conservative anti-government ideology had overthrown, or at least come to challenge seriously, what were now hoary New Deal orthodoxies.
This newfound aversion to ambitious social programs may explain why many recent traumas that promised to bring bold federal action ultimately failed to do so. Such false heralds date back at least to the Kerner Commission of 1967 and '68, convened after the urban riots of the preceding summers, which warned that American society was drifting ''toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal." Despite high hopes, it yielded no lasting federal programs. Neither did the Los Angeles riots of 1992. Nor have such national ordeals as the energy shocks of the 1970s or the health-care crisis of recent times....
Although observers have contrasted the Bush administration's swift reaction to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 with its foot-dragging after Katrina, in fact 9/11 also represented a missed opportunity for action. Just after the attacks, Americans found succor in the presence of such agencies as FEMA, the FAA, and the EPA, which provided a kind of Alphabet Soup for the soul, a comforting reassurance that the government would come to the rescue.
Yet no far-sighted domestic vision ever emerged. Apart from waging war, Bush's main focus was to claim that 9/11 further justified his tax cuts....
Meanwhile, uncritical expressions of faith in private enterprise have pervaded our discourse. Newscasts celebrated heroic individual missions to round up supplies for the victims or retrieve stranded New Orleanians, while press reports highlighted Wal-Mart's donation of $17 million in cash to relief efforts (even though it offered some displaced employees only three days' pay). Where government failed, these stories implied, the private sphere triumphed.
Of course, recent reports have noted that many private firms performed miserably as well. Tenet Health Care owns the hospital where 45 patients died. Entergy, a utility company, has been tardy in restoring power. Carnival Cruise Lines is charging the government luxury rates to house evacuees and recovery workers on its ships.
More fundamentally, the stories suggesting that the market works better than the government take for granted everything that the government alone can do. Private efforts by themselves did not, and cannot, respond adequately to a catastrophe as huge and complex as Katrina. ...