Report - Campaign for America's Future
August 1, 2007
"We will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives. And all who question the future of the Crescent City need to know there is no way to imagine America without New Orleans, and this great city will rise again."
—President Bush, September 15, 2005 address in Jackson Square
When Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, the federal government failed its people. It failed to prepare and failed to rescue. Now it has failed to rebuild.
Behind all the failures is a failed promise. In the wreckage of New Orleans, President Bush seemed to discover the problem of poverty in America. He promised not just to rebuild New Orleans but to address the problems that underlay Hurricane Katrina's ruins. But after two years, President Bush has failed miserably. The former residents of New Orleans are still scattered across the country. The basic infrastructure of a once-great American city—one of the cultural jewels of our nation—is still in shambles. Fraud, abuse and cronyism infect what little reconstruction has taken place, and the disparity between the haves and have-nots continues to increase not only in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, but across the country.
As we approach the second anniversary of Katrina’s landfall, Americans are asking what has been accomplished. And the answer is: not nearly enough.
