Promises to Keep

Left Field by Patricia Nell Warren

For nearly a century now the United States has promoted itself as the powerful, compassionate country that kept promises when relief was needed. During the Great Depression we made good on promises to put our jobless millions to work. After World War II, we kept our promise to help rebuild bombed-out Europe.

Today our government still does a lot of promise-making. One gov Web site crows: “It is this caring that stands as a hallmark of the United States around the world—and shows the world our true character as a nation.” But in recent years, the actual promise-keeping has sagged—even after 9/11, when New York City had a hard time getting the $20 billion promised by Bush for rebuilding. And in recent months, as government fumbled its response to Katrina, our image as the big do-gooder was left tattered and flapping in the hurricane’s 175-mph gales.

Katrina’s after-effects revealed that the official gap between promise and performance has become horrifically wide—especially when it comes to government helping our own people. In just a few days, the entire Gulf region became the equivalent of a war zone, with deaths, suffering, and destruction of homes and infrastructure on a scale that might as well have been caused by enemy missiles.

Yes, Katrina prompted an impressive outpouring of private effort and giving. But what was the government’s response? FEMA, the agency supposedly in charge of disaster response, was dogged by stumbles and bungles. Response was slowed further by the absence (in Iraq) of National Guard troops, who ordinarily provide much of the muscle in domestic relief work. On 9/15 President Bush stood in Jackson Square, New Orleans, and promised $60 billion for “one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen.”

Yet by October 10 Paul Krugman had written a scathing editorial in The New York Times saying, “There are no visible signs that the administration has even begun developing a plan. No reconstruction czar has been appointed; no commission has been named. There have been no public hearings. And as far as we can tell, nobody is in charge.”

For refugees with HIV/AIDS, relief was spotty. Texas, where many wound up, did do an emergency expansion of ADAP; help was available at some clinics and centers across the country. But the wipe-out of patient records by flooding, combined with the rigidity of a rule-ridden AIDS healthcare system, meant that many people couldn’t get their needed care or meds. Some gay and transgendered refugees with HIV and AIDS reported being denied help by homophobic organizations.

Not only did Katrina cause new problems, she aggravated old ones. In 2002 Bush had promised that chronic homelessness would end by 2012. Yet just before Katrina struck, more Americans than ever were homeless—nearly three quarters of a million (an estimated four percent of these with HIV or AIDS). After the hurricane, in Louisiana and Mississippi alone, half a million people needed housing. Total: around 1.25 million homeless. But FEMA’s brilliant solution has been to put refugees in hotels at a cost of $11 million a day instead of moving swiftly and efficiently to settle them in real housing at reasonable market prices.

What in the world has happened to our proud tradition of relief? Many things, starting with 9/11, when the so-called “war on terror” became more important to most of our leaders than the “war on poverty” and “war on AIDS.” Even the “war on Katrina” stacked up as less important, judging by performance.

Worse, the U.S. is virtually bankrupt—with 2004 revenues of $1.863 trillion and expenses of $2.338 trillion, and costs of the Iraq war to top $200 billion by the end of 2005. At every level, through state and local, government is cutting essential programs for health, education, infrastructure, and other human needs. Yet President Bush stood there in Jackson Square and promised $60 billion. Where will Washington find this money? Especially with untold billions of dollars a year being sucked away into the pork and corruption that infests our government?

The Bush administration’s shaky relief policy is also compromised by its coziness with the religious right. Example: Bush directed FEMA to reimburse the hurricane-relief expenses of the many faith-based organizations in the field. It’s a real shocker—this give-away of taxpayer money to religious groups who pay no taxes, at a time when the government teeters near Chapter 11.

American poet laureate Robert Frost wrote, “I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.” But most of our elected officials have nodded off in the midst of their broken promises. How many more Katrinas will it take before Americans demand that promises be kept?

Author of fiction bestsellers and provocative commentary, Patricia Nell Warren has her writings archived at www.patricianellwarren.com. Reach her by e-mail at patriciawarren@aol.com.

November 2005