Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Corruption as usual

Anne Applebaum:

Two hurricanes have now hit Louisiana, wreaking terrible destruction. New Orleans continues to flood. Hundreds of thousands of people are scattered across the country, many in shelters. Given the scale of the calamity, surely it's time for Louisiana politicians to stop, assess the damage and work out the most rational way to help their state recover. Surely this is not the time for the government to write blank checks, for legislators to get greedy about unnecessary canals in their districts, or for federal agencies to launch projects that make future flooding more likely. Surely this is the time to spend money wisely. Right?

Wrong -- and if you thought otherwise, then you, like me, are still learning how deeply corrupt America's legislative branch has become. Most of the time, members of Congress don't accept cash bribes in unmarked envelopes. Most of the time, senators don't pay for their daughters' wedding receptions out of government slush funds. Most of the time, American politicians don't put their ill-gotten gains into numbered Swiss bank accounts or get the Mafia to launder their money. But corruption comes in many forms, and in this country it comes in the dull-sounding, unglamorous, switch-off-the-television form of infrastructure appropriations.

Exhibit A is the Louisiana congressional delegation's new request for $250 billion in hurricane reconstruction funds. As a Post editorial pointed out yesterday, this money -- more than $50,000 per Louisiana resident -- would come on top of the $62.3 billion Congress has already appropriated, on top of the charitable donations, on top of the insurance payouts. Among other things, the proposal demands $40 billion of new Army Corps of Engineers spending, 16 times more than the Corps says it needs to protect New Orleans from a Category 5 hurricane. Despite the fact that previous Corps projects drained Louisiana's coastal wetlands, thereby destroying what could have been a natural buffer against at least some of the Rita and Katrina storm surges, the proposal calls for a suspension of environmental reviews. Despite the fact that Louisiana spent hundreds of millions of dollars on water projects that turned out to be unnecessary, or even damaging, the proposal makes it possible to suspend cost-benefit analyses.

In its scale and sheer disregard for common sense, the Louisiana proposal breaks new ground. But I don't want to single out Louisiana: After all, the state's representatives are acting logically, even if they aren't spending logically. They are playing by the rules of the only system for distributing federal funds that there is, and that system allocates money not according to the dictates of logic, but to the demands of politics and patronage.

The logic of corruption does not make it right and certainly there is not one member of the Louisiana congressional delegation that will be eligible for a profiles in courage award after this mess. To see all of them go on TV and blame others then ask others to pay for the mess they refuse to take responsibility for is breath taking. The state and local officials are worse. None of them should be permitted to get their hands on any of this money nor should anyone who contributes to them.

The bid process for the work must not gave favor to Louisiana contractors who have so miserably failed the state inthe past. Make the projects open to bid by contractors around the US and the world. Certainly they should consider engineering and contracting services from places like the Netherlands in rebuilding the levees. Texas and Mississippi contractors do a much better job of building roads and other infrastructure. By making the Louisiana contractors compete, we will make them better and more efficient.