NY Times Backed Bush Cut of “Boondoggle” Flood Control Bill

RUSH: I got this from Power Line. It’s another great blog out there and it was also on Free Republic. The Freepers are doing great work on all this. “The New York Times is leading the shameless Bush and Republican bashing with respect to the response to Hurricane Katrina. One of its themes is that Congress didn’t pay enough attention to flood control in the Gulf. But Donald Luskin reminds us of this bit of wisdom from the New York Times editorial page earlier this year.” If you’ve been paying attention — and I don’t know how long you can before you have to find something else to do with all this on television 24/7, but — there has been talk that the Bush administration was presented with this massive $14 billion plan to upgrade the levees and do a lot of work in the Mississippi Delta. It would have taken ten years, and even if it had been approved, the work would not have been anywhere near ready. It wouldn’t have prevented the levees from breaking, but at least somebody would have cared and done something, and everybody’s been walking around, “Oh, no, Bush vetoed it or reduced it.” He didn’t veto it, but the Bush administration cut the funding from $14 billion to $2.3 billion, right? You heard that one? So you heard about this big $14 billion plan that Bush slashed to $2.3 billion? Okay, well, good. If you’ve heard that, then listen to this. Here’s the New York Times editorial page earlier this year:
“Anyone who cares about responsible budgeting and the health of America’s rivers and wetlands should pay attention to a bill now before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. The bill would shovel $17 billion at the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control and other water-related projects — this at a time when President Bush is asking for major cuts in Medicaid and other important domestic programs. Among these projects is a $2.7 billion boondoggle on the Mississippi River that has twice flunked inspection by the National Academy of Sciences.” Earlier this year the New York Times editorialized against the $2.7 billion program! They called it a boondoggle, because they said it twice flunked inspection by the National Academy of Sciences. So they put this plan together. The New York Times had this agency look at it. “Nah, this thing, it will never work. It’s a boondoggle, money down the drain, so to speak.” They end up saying, “This is a bad piece of legislation.” Earlier this year, the New York Times agreed with Bush. In fact, Bush authorized the $2.7 billion and the New York Times was against a penny of it being authorized. But now, after the fact, guess who has forgotten? The New York Times forget what they editorialized earlier this year, and the rest of the sycophants in the media which follow the New York Times apparently don’t know this at all, because apparently now Bush is a skinflint for not appropriating the whole $17 billion. We’ll be back in just a second. I guess we are performing a much needed public service here today, folks, and I’m honored to be the purveyor of such information to you.
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