15 Sep 2005 Bush’s Hurricane Speech

After you’ve finished emptying your wallet, selling the family silver, emptying your kids’ college funds and selling everything of value in your home to pay the taxes necessary to pay the bill for what the White House is proposing to put millions of people back below sea level, where they’ll be especially vulnerable to the next hurricane, read the Heritage Foundation paper From Tragedy to Triumph: Principled Solutions for Rebuilding Lives and Communities.

Heritage remains aware that there is such a thing as self-reliance and, in theory at least, limited government. Bush used to be aware of the same.

I guess he ‘grew’ in office.

Addendum: Here’s the AP’s take:

WASHINGTON – The era of big government is back. President Bush is presiding over the most expensive government relief and reconstruction operation in U.S. history.

With estimates of the federal tab ranging up to $200 billion or more for rebuilding New Orleans and other storm-ravaged Gulf Coast cities, Bush and his Republican allies in Congress are casting aside budget discipline.

They’re also deferring – for now – vows to finish the Reagan revolution against big government and turning to some of the same kinds of public health, housing and job assistance programs they once criticized as legacies of the Democrats’ New Deal and Great Society.

Bush called the project “one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen” in his Thursday evening address to the nation from New Orleans…

Addendum 2: JunkYardBlog notes the mayor of New Orleans likes moolah from federal taxpayers, but doesn’t want our opinions.