Stuck on stupid III: Landrieu's hypocrisy

One always can count on Sen. Mary Landrieu to try to make the ridiculous look sublime. The trouble is, she generally fails, and does so again in her weak defense of criticism the Louisiana congressional delegation got concerning its over-the-top $250 billion request for hurricane damage reconstruction.

The old injunction that we shouldn’t be “afraid to climb those golden stairs” certainly operates here. If you ask for the sun, moon, and stars, maybe you’ll end up with one out of three which will win you a batting title many years, so a huge request in and of itself does not connote poor political judgment. But consider:

Louisiana’s reputation for honesty in politics doesn’t exactly stand out, and this has suffered even during Hurricane Katrina relief efforts

This compounds the fact that the bill, S. 1765, is larded up with pork barrel and spending items barely related to the disaster – making it look like Katrina is just being used as an excuse to impose on the rest of the country’s goodwill, exacerbating the credibility problem

Aid money flowing into the state in the bill would head to a Louisiana-controlled commission, whose state and local officials haven’t exactly distinguished themselves during the crisis

Into this environment Landrieu attempts to quell critics of the bill with her name attached to it. Her thesis: “It's that an entire region vital to our national energy supply, security and commerce has been devastated,” and thus needs the full weight of the bill.

But leopards do not change their spots, and Landrieu’s liberalism and free-spending ways begin to get in the way of this message. Thus, when she writes, “rebuilding this region will take more than just higher levees. We must also build a better education system in the region,” she means the federal government should pick up the tab to improve an abysmal state educational system, one which only recently has gotten serious about improving education, and still makes the mistake of thinking teachers should be rewarded with higher salaries without any direct accountability measures.

And when she writes “We must provide the infrastructure and appropriate incentives [emphasis added] for businesses and industry that are positioned to accept the risk of reopening their doors,” one must ask, is this the same Mary Landrieu who, in the past couple of years, has voted against tax cuts, against tax cuts for investment, to rescind tax cuts, to raise taxes on many business owners, and who supported changing Senate rules to make it harder to cut taxes, interfering with employers ability to negotiate benefits with workers, and hampering employers ability to deal with pay issues, twice. So she suddenly gets religion when it’s convenient with a huge pot of money at stake? A kind of indirect hypocrisy?

But she ventures off into direct hypocrisy when she asserts she and others from the Louisiana delegation had made “years of requests to stem the repeated cuts to our flood and hurricane protection programs.” Louisiana recently has gotten more Army Corps of Engineers dollars than any other state, but only a fraction of which went to flood control. In this time period Landrieu made active efforts to steer money away from more useful flood protection towards more questionable projects.

What the Louisiana delegation needs more now that ever in credibility in their requests and proposed administration of relief monies. S. 1765 lacks that, and Landrieu’s missive does nothing to change it.