State and local officials insist that residents and business owners are unlikely to come back to New Orleans and many other Gulf Coast communities without a significant federal investment in flood protection and reconstruction. But what is the government's responsibility to people who have chosen to live in one of the country's most flood-prone areas?
The federal government has already committed $62 billion to the Hurricane Katrina relief and reconstruction effort, and spent about one-third of that so far. Absent an increase in taxes or cuts in other federal programs, that money is being added to the federal deficit.
That means people who "live on a mountain in the middle of the desert" are sharing the cost of rebuilding a coastal city below sea level, said Robert P. Hartwig, a senior vice president and chief economist at the Insurance Information Institute. It also means that today's children and their children will ultimately shoulder the burden of paying to rebuild the Gulf Coast.
It isn't fair that taxpayers in safer areas have to subsidize those who choose to live in more hazardous locales, said Veronique de Rugy, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
She warns that too much federal support for disaster victims will foster a sense of complacency. People will have no incentive to purchase flood insurance or hurricane-proof their homes if they believe that the federal government will step in and bail them out after a disaster.
"At some level it makes sense that the federal government should help, but there should be a lesson," de Rugy said. "People who have behaved in a completely irresponsible way by not taking any insurance should lose something."
A number of fiscal conservatives have compiled lists of federal programs that could be cut to compensate for the $62 billion already committed to Katrina relief and reconstruction.
Scholars Steve Slivinski and Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute suggest taking the knife to farm subsidies ($21.1 billion), energy research and subsidies ($6.2 billion), community development grants ($5.4 billion) and the U.S. Agency for International Development ($4.7 billion), among other programs. On her list, de Rugy offers up employment training and services ($5.4 billion), vocational and adult education ($1.9 billion), state grants for child support enforcement ($4.3 billion) and a $9.6 billion chunk of NASA's $16.5 billion budget.
Though she has no expectation the federal government will actually take her recommendations, de Rugy said, it should.
The federal government has traditionally played an important role in rebuilding after disasters elsewhere. But there is some sentiment that the federal government has a unique responsibility to New Orleans and other communities on the lower Mississippi, because many of the things that make the region so vulnerable to hurricanes are the direct result of things Washington has done for the welfare of the country as a whole.
For example, the gigantic levees along the Mississippi, under federal control since 1879, have benefited farmers in the Upper Midwest by providing an economical means of exporting grain. But they also direct sediment that used to settle in the coastal wetlands of Louisiana out into the Gulf of Mexico. Without a regular supply of mud, the coastal wetlands have gradually been devoured by waves and rising sea levels.
The Louisiana coast has lost up to 40 square miles of marsh annually in recent decades. Because wetlands partially absorb storm surges, that has made southern Louisiana even more vulnerable to hurricanes.
Louisiana also provides the nation with oil and natural gas, which keeps the cost of those fuels down by limiting the amount that must be imported. But pipelines, drilling rigs and refineries take their toll on the local environment by damaging wetlands and causing pollution. In addition, pumping oil out of subterranean formations causes them to compress, which makes the ground sink even lower.
"Louisiana has sacrificed its coastline so those people in North Dakota can have fuel oil, so they can drive their vehicles," said Craig Colten, a geographer at Louisiana State University.
Several pieces of legislation have been submitted to Congress that would give Louisiana and other coastal states a cut of the federal tax revenue from offshore oil production. Under current rules Washington gives states half of the revenue it collects from drilling on federal lands, but that applies only to onshore oil wells. If the policy were extended to offshore production Louisiana could earn $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion annually.
"That provides a very appropriate source to pay for this," Kopplin said.
