9-12-05, 11:30 am
The Bush administration's failure to respond rapidly and adequately to the catastrophe after Hurricane Katrina earned it much deserved criticism. But the administration did respond quickly to requests by its large donors and corporate backers to push on with its ultra-right agenda.
One of Bush's very first responses to the hurricane tragedy, aside from refusing to take responsibility for his administration's slowness, its excessive vacation time, its appointment of incompetents, and its years of budget cuts that allowed New Orleans' levees to crumble, was to suspend a federal law that requires corporations who receive federal contracts to pay prevailing wages in the region the work is done.
Bush claims that his indefinite suspension of this law, known as the Davis-Bacon Act, aimed only at the Gulf States is needed to help the region recover. The wage rollback was ordered before the administration even announced the removal of Michael Brown from overseeing Katrina recovery operations.
Unfortunately, Bush's argument only considers the point of view of business interests. And since the only real work that will be occurring along the Gulf Coast in the near future that might be affected by suspension of the law will be related to reconstruction, Bush's policy decision has a major impact on workers’ wages and the pace of economic recovery in the region.
While Bush's policy will likely boost profits for the companies involved, Bush's call to lift wage protections will adversely affect workers, their families, and the local communities in which they will be living.
In addition to this simple fact, reports from the Washington Post and other news sources show that federal contracts for the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast are going to companies with ties to the Bush administration.
Kellog, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of the infamous Halliburton Company known for squandering billions of taxpayer dollars in Iraq, the Shaw Group, and Bechtel are three of the top federal contractors whom FEMA has selected to begin reconstruction projects worth hundreds of millions so far.
All three of these companies have strong personal ties to the Bush administration through former and current employees, a network of corporate lobbyists, current contracts, and enormous political campaign contributions. Only Shaw Group is based in Louisiana.
Bush's policy of favoritism and fattening the bottom line by pushing down wages has been denounced by critics as aiding in profiting from disaster.
Anna Burger, chair of the Change to Win Coalition, also added a call for overturning Bush's order. 'This crisis,' Burger stated, 'should not be used to compound the tragedy that has befallen tens of thousands of working people that have already lost their homes, their jobs and their loved ones. Rebuilding the disaster zone should be done on the basis of the strongest worker protections.'
While Bush's defenders, trying use the disaster to score ideological points, insist that the Davis-Bacon law is a costly bureaucratic rule that will slow down recovery, they do so only because they regard any law that helps workers as a burden on the corporate interests they serve. Interestingly, when the demand for accountability was at its sharpest, Bush's defenders insisted that now is the time to set aside differences and work together to rebuild and recover.
Unfortunately this talking point doesn't seem to apply when it comes to the bottom line of the companies that have turned in millions to help get Bush elected. Additionally, Bush’s defenders fail to note that speedy economic recovery depends most on creating as many good paying jobs as quickly as possible, not on policies that increase high profits for few companies who for the most part aren’t going to reinvest their profits in the Gulf Coast states.
Now is not the time to profit off of disaster. Now is the time for the federal government to invest the needed money and provide direction to enable the communities involved in the recovery to work together to rebuild and to help working families return to a normal life with the help of good paying jobs and good benefits.
A resolute and concentrated effort to rebuild schools, hospitals, roads, public transportation, community buildings, housing, and other important sites based on good paying jobs should be the focus of the recovery work. But, for Bush, profits for the few are the only thing that really get him moving.
Withholding good wages in order to enrich Bush's buddies is simply a crime that compounds the crimes that created the immensity of this disaster in the first place.
--Reach Joel Wendland at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.
