Mary Landrieu Goes After Some Pork

Mary Landrieu is going after funding to help rebuild New Orleans after the devastation of Katrina. The problem is that a lot of the funding she’s asking for isn’t really going to go to rebuilding efforts.

Washington Times – Sen. Mary Landrieu, the senior senator from Louisiana who threatened on national television to punch out the president if he didn’t straighten up and come across, has presented the mother of all shopping lists. If Mzz Landrieu gets half of what she’s asking for, Santa Claus should move to Bourbon Street to cut down on his Christmas commute.
Mzz Landrieu wants billions and baubles, and no strings. “Louisiana will be rebuilt by Louisianans,” she says proudly. “New Orleans will be rebuilt by New Orleans. And southern Louisiana will be rebuilt under the leadership of the people who call it home.”
That’s the way it should be, within reasonable limits, but since the rest of us are asked to shut up and just send the money we’re entitled to examine the Christmas list. The legislation runs to 440 pages.

What exactly is encompassed within those 440 pages in the way of spending?

$35 million for the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board; $8 million for direct financial assistance to alligator farmers; $12 million for the restoration of wildlife management areas; $25 million to complete the Sugarcane Research Laboratory; $120 million for a laboratory, facilities and equipment at the Southern Regional Research Center; $28 million for the restoration and rehabilitation of trees; $34 million to support the research and education activities of the Agriculture Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service; $19 million for the acquisition of first-responder mobile communications and to provide public wireless Internet access in a 100-block area of downtown New Orleans; $250 million for assistance to firefighters; $100 million for “early intervention, prevention, and disorder treatment” for children up to 5 years old; another $100 million for early intervention, prevention, and disorder treatment for children older than that; $100 million for assessment, early intervention, prevention, and treatment for “substance abuse” (and we’re not talking red beans and rice, delicious substances though those are); $600 million for early childhood education; $20 million for the establishment of development plans for development districts in the state; $160 million to implement the 2005 recommendations of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission related to the federal city development in Algiers, La.; $7 billion for rebuilding evacuation and energy supply routes (that’s in addition to $5 billion for expansion of road and transit capacity); $150 million for small business loans and tax breaks, and another $50 billion in block grants (this is in case someone forgot to ask for something).
Speaking of incidentals, Sen. Landrieu and her legislation asks for reimbursement of lost business revenue, which is exceedingly nice work if you can get it. This includes $27 million for lost timber revenues from the Pearl River Wildlife Management Area, $250,000 for “lost” milk of dairy farmers, $11 million for cattle farmers, $5 million for “dairy spoilage” (this may be spilt milk), another $5 million for “unspecified livestock-related losses.”

I’ll grant that some of those spending items are good things, but money for substance abuse programs? Fifty billion dollars in “block grants”? Disorder intervention, prevention and disorder treatment for kids under 5?
If Landrieu is so desperate to rebuild New Orleans why doesn’t she just focus on getting federal money for that instead of clouding the issue with all this extemporaneous spending? If you’ll remember, diverting funds from needed emergency programs and levee projects to unrelated pet projects is part of the reason Katrina was such a disaster in the first place.
It sure doesn’t seem like Landrieu is doing much to fix that.