Katrina Costs keep Sneaking Up

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Katrina Costs keep Sneaking Up

Posted: 9/16/2005 5:58:21 AM EDT

News
09/16/2005 08:20:54 EST Katrina May Affect U.S. Aid Abroad
By KIM GAMEL
Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK - The top U.S. aid official cautioned that the cost of Hurricane Katrina could come at the expense of some overseas assistance.
Andrew Natsios, administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, said Thursday nonessential foreign aid could be delayed as the United States struggles to assist victims of the killer storm.

"We're going to try and increase (aid) but let's not get too carried away," he told reporters on the sidelines of a U.N. summit. "We want realistic expectations."

Natsios said he was trying to reduce expectations for a significant aid increase in discussions with foreign diplomats during the three-day gathering of world leaders ending Friday.

Natsios also said the international community had responded to Hurricane Katrina by offering $750 million in cash alone - not including goods and services that have poured in from around the world - as the United States found itself on the other side of need.

Rebuilding the devastated Gulf Coast is expected to cost at least $200 billion in the near term. The final tab could approach the more than $300 billion spent thus far on U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress already has approved $62 billion for the natural disaster, but that is expected to run out next month.

Natsios defended the Bush administration's aid policies after the U.N. General Assembly was forced to water down a summit document on poverty, human rights and reform.

Many leaders speaking at the summit criticized the United States and other wealthy countries for failing to meet the Millennium Development Goals for reducing poverty and disease by 2015.

Natsios said the United States had increased its overseas development aid by 14 percent in 2004, while several other countries cut their foreign aid budgets.

He singled out Germany and Norway.

"They're nowhere near 0.7 percent," he said, referring to the goal that calls on nations to set aside 0.7 percent of their gross national product for foreign aid.

The United States, which has one of the lowest levels at about 0.16 percent, strongly opposes that target.

But the U.S. aid chief said the pendulum had shifted in favor of increasing foreign aid as Americans connect the need to help the developing world with the war on terrorism.

"There is a relationship between the protection of the homeland and our program," he said.

"It's not that poverty causes terrorism ... but they certainly use failed states as operating headquarters because there's no way of controlling them in a failed state," he said, pointing to former al-Qaida bases in Somalia, Sudan and Afghanistan as examples.

Posted: 9/16/2005 5:59:42 AM EDT

[#1]

The truly depressing thing about all this is not that we are going to spend a lot of money rebuilding NO, but that we are going to waste a bunch of money and people are going to try to bilk the system for all they can get, just like some jackasses did during the 9/11 efforts.

Posted: 9/16/2005 6:02:40 AM EDT

[#2]

Quoted:
The truly depressing thing about all this is not that we are going to spend a lot of money rebuilding NO, but that we are going to waste a bunch of money and people are going to try to bilk the system for all they can get, just like some jackasses did during the 9/11 efforts.

A lot of the legislators don't want to come across as being chumps for not helping the poor and whatevers out there. Sure there are many people who lost everything, but for everyone of those, there is someone who is willing to fleece the system.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Katrina Costs keep Sneaking Up

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