Bush fights improved programs for poor-favors only one time Hurricaine fix

[papau]

Gosselin & Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the Los Angeles Times suggest the Bush Administration is favoring the one-time delivery of services to the displaced through FEMA, rather than risk creating on-going entitlement obligations in areas such as health care and housing - indeed, David Rogers of the Wall Street Journal in fact says this, ". . . the Administration is working openly to rein in a bipartisan Senate Medicaid bill to extend health-care coverage to Katrina survivors. The White House prefers a more incremental approach of state-by-state waivers and the Administration reached agreement with the state of Mississippi yesterday and was close to agreement with Alabama."

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NEWS ANALYSIS
Limiting Government's Role
Bush favors one-time fixes over boosting existing programs to help Katrina victims.
By Peter G. Gosselin and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
Times Staff Writers

September 23, 2005

WASHINGTON — Two days after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced plans to issue emergency vouchers aimed at helping poor storm victims find new housing quickly by covering as much as $10,000 of their rent.

But the department suddenly backed away from the idea after White House aides met with senior HUD officials. Although emergency vouchers had been successfully used after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the administration focused instead on a plan for government-built trailer parks, an approach that even many Republicans say would concentrate poverty in the very fashion the government has long sought to avoid.

A similar struggle has occurred over how to provide healthcare to storm victims. White House officials are quietly working to derail a proposal by leading Republican and Democratic senators to temporarily expand Medicaid. Instead, the administration is pushing a narrower plan that would not commit the government to covering certain groups of evacuees.

As President Bush tackles the monumental task of easing the social problems wrought by Katrina, he is proving deeply reluctant to use some of the big-government tools at his disposal, apparently out of fear of permanently enlarging programs that he opposes or has sought to cut.

Instead of depending on long-running programs for such services as housing and healthcare, the president has generally tried to create new, one-shot efforts that the administration apparently hopes will more easily disappear after the crisis passes. That has meant relying on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has run virtually all of the recovery effort.
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[Spinzonner]

1. Of course, with National Health Insurance

it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference where the hell you were.

[papau]

2. W/H IS ACTUALLY SAYING THAT IT IS BETTER FOR POOR TO

to go to emergency rooms and demand free care, so that the hospital can recover by over-charging ins and medicare and medicaid, and via State aid that might be begun/increased via a future Federal bill.

Do GOPers ever take a course in logic?