Misplaced Priorities
FROM THE PRESIDENT
Gerald W. McEntee
We all watched in horror as a beautiful and historic city nearly drowned. As people needlessly went without food and water. As the poor, the very young, the elderly, people with disabilities and people of color were left behind while others were able to escape. Hurricane Katrina is one of the worst disasters in our nation's history, affecting nearly a million people, including more than 3,000 of our union's members in Louisiana.
As public service workers, they have been facing a twin challenge: providing aid to fellow citizens while coping with their own losses. Pages 8 to 19 of this issue bring home how heroically they performed under those very trying circumstances.
Apologists for the Bush administration say that everyone was surprised by Katrina's destruction and unforgiving intensity. But the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) warned in 2001 that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the nation's three most-likely disasters. The Bush administration knew — and should have been prepared.
Instead, the administration enacted trillions of dollars worth of tax cuts for the rich and provided unlimited resources for a questionable war that has become an unquestionable quagmire. They spent on the wrong things and failed to spend money on the right ones.
A CITY LEFT EXPOSED. FEMA was subsumed into the Department of Homeland Security's mega-bureaucracy and directed to turn away from natural-disaster prevention and relief. Pleas from local officials and others to make critical repairs to New Orleans' levees were repeatedly ignored. Flood-control funding was drastically cut. And a city was left exposed.
There's blame to go around at all levels of government. But it is the misplaced priorities and decisions of the White House that worsened this calamity.
Why cut taxes for the rich when our infrastructure is crumbling and when half of New Orleans' children live in poverty? The Bush administration has spent five years systematically dismantling public services wherever possible, and we're now reaping what was sewn.
Only weeks after Katrina, Hurricane Rita descended on Texas, flooding parts of the state and inflicting even more damage on some areas of Louisiana. Once again, the most vulnerable suffered the greatest losses.
DO THE RIGHT THING? HECK, NO. For a short time, it appeared that President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress were going to do the right thing and rebuild the Gulf Coast. Instead, they are using the cost of rebuilding as an excuse for up to $50 billion in cuts from the very programs the hurricane victims need most: Medicaid, Food Stamps, housing and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
AFSCME, along with more than a dozen partners, has launched the Emergency Campaign for America's Priorities to stop that shameful scheme dead in its tracks. ECAP includes aggressive grassroots activities aimed at members of Congress from 32 "swing" districts. Affiliates in Delaware, Iowa, Ohio, Maine, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Wisconsin have held "speak out" forums urging their congressional delegations to vote against Bush's scheme.
We've launched a schedule of radio ads and sent educational materials to hundreds of thousands of our members, and we're circulating a "wrong priorities" petition. In addition, we have kicked off an innovative "online march" aimed at securing a federal budget that makes working families a high priority. Go to Act Now to send a message to Congress that its members should do just that — and also support a strong public sector.
It's simple: Cutting services for people in need to finance tax breaks for the wealthy is the wrong priority. We're going to make the Bush administration and Congress understand that it's time they get their priorities straight.
On Nov. 8, we took a long step in that direction, winning major elections that sent Bush a message. (See Page 6 for details.)
