Pork Barrel Funding in Katrina-Ravaged Louisiana

It is amazing that it takes a natural disaster to expose the weaknesses of our government. The Gulf Coast of the United States was devastated by two major hurricanes, with one being catastrophic in nature. Hurricane Katrina completely wiped out cities off of the map and turned them into instantaneous third world countries. 

Now, three months after Hurricane Katrina, two Louisiana senators (i.e. members of the board of directors) are each proposing a bill requesting $250 billion to rebuild the hurricane ravaged areas. What is going to get your blood boiling is how they plan to spend this money if they get this bill passed. They are planning on using your hard earn money that we pay in the form of taxes for pork. This is wasteful and irresponsible spending and they must be held accountable, much like the shareholders of a large corporation holding the board of directors and executives accountable when they don’t perform. This same concept exists here. 

This is a perfect example of how our elected officials are not acting in our (i.e. the shareholders) best interests. This is nothing more than a wish list by exploiting a tragedy and taking advantage of those that lost everything. This is not helping our fellow Americans who lost their livelihood. This is absolutely selfish. Would we be doing a disservice by allowing them to give money to do this? The money raised needs to be given to the people that lost property in the hurricane ravaged areas, such as the casino boats in Mississippi. 

Yes, Louisiana and Mississippi need to be rebuilt. This is contrary to what some people are saying that we should not do. However, a system needs to be put into place that will make sure that our tax dollars are spent wisely and given to the people that need it. What if these two senators would have said this in their bill? “We want to give every homeowner who lost their home $100,000 to rebuild it.” I would be ok with that, and evaluate their performance on how well these homeowners receive their money to rebuild.