United States Senator Hillary Clinton fuelled the political debate over Hurricane Katrina on Wednesday, insisting on an independent inquiry into the federal response and sharply rejecting President George Bush’s bid to lead the probe himself.
”I don’t think the government should be investigating itself,” Clinton told CNN as the polemics intensified over last week’s storm, which left New Orleans in chaos and thousands feared dead on the US Gulf Coast.
”I don’t think either the president or the Congress can conduct the kind of objective, independent investigation that we need,” the New York Democrat and former first lady said on CBS television.
Clinton, considered a potential White House candidate for 2008, has taken a prominent role in criticising the Bush administration for the sluggish early efforts to dispatch troops and relief supplies to hurricane-hit areas.
She wrote Bush a critical letter over the weekend and visited evacuees in the Astrodome stadium in Houston, Texas. She held a major news conference on Tuesday before making the rounds of television stations on Wednesday.
Senate Republicans have announced investigations into the government’s handling of Katrina. Bush, who has acknowledged shortcomings, promised on Tuesday to lead an inquiry into ”what went wrong”.
But Clinton is pushing for the creation of an independent ”Katrina commission” along the lines of the panel reluctantly named by Bush that issued a voluminous report on the September 11 2001 terror attacks.
”I think we sort of have lost track of the fact this is a government that has to be accountable to the people of our country,” Clinton told CNN. ”This is not a game. This has to be a serious inquiry that people have confidence in, that will help us understand what did go wrong. The sooner we know that, the better.”
The White House declined comments on Clinton’s remarks, which came as a Gallup poll published on Wednesday signalled mounting problems for Bush over Katrina.
Forty-two percent of those interviewed rated his handling of the crisis as terrible or bad, with 35% judging his performance good or great.
Stinging rebukes
With the president already sagging under his worst popularity ratings and growing opposition on the Iraq war, Clinton used the hurricane issue to deliver some of her most stinging rebukes of the Republican administration.
”Our government failed the people of this nation, and we cannot afford continuing failure or future failures,” she told the news conference held in Washington on Tuesday with other top Democrats.
She suggested the response to Katrina was typical of a White House that made a series of miscalculations on Iraq and then got rid of officials who offered dissenting views.
”The only people in this administration who are ever held to account are people who speak truth to power,” Clinton said. ”But if you’re incompetent in this administration, apparently you have a job for as long as they’re there.”
Clinton also attacked a cornerstone of Bush’s post-September 11 policies: a Homeland Security Department absorbing a host of other agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) criticised for its Katrina operations.
She said she would introduce legislation to separate Fema from Homeland Security and give it Cabinet-level status. But she stopped short of backing other Democrats who have called for the firing of Fema chief Michael Brown.
With the political world in the US already gearing up for the November 2006 congressional elections, the administration has worked hard to defuse attacks on its response to the country’s worst natural disaster.
Bush has speeded federal troops to the area and was reportedly ready to ask for another $40-billion to $50-billion in aid from Congress, which has already approved $10,5-billion.
He also recruited Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton, to co-chair a massive fund-raising effort along with another former president, Bush’s father, George Bush.
Katrina will hurt US growth
Meanwhile, reports Jitendra Joshi, Hurricane Katrina could hit US growth by up to 1% and cause insurance losses to rival the September 11 terror attacks of 2001, congressional budget forecasters said on Wednesday.
But the US economy should weather the storm, the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said in the first official analysis of the economic impact of Katrina.
In a letter to congressional leaders, the office said Katrina could hit growth ”in the second half of the year by half to one percentage point and reduce employment through the end of this year by about 400 000”.
Preliminary estimates suggest that privately insured losses from Katrina ”could exceed $30-billion”, compared with about $32,5-billion paid out after the September 11 attacks, it said.
But it added: ”Economic growth and employment are likely to rebound during the first half of 2006 as rebuilding accelerates.”
The CBO projection chimes with the consensus view of economists who have been predicting that Katrina will shave at least 0,5% off US gross domestic product (GDP) to take second-half growth down to between 3% and 4%.
US Treasury Secretary John Snow said on Friday the economy will see ”somewhat slower growth” for a few months after Katrina.
”The fortunate thing is that the economy is performing so well,” he said.
The CBO said the hurricane’s overall effects will be ”significant but not overwhelming”.
”Last week, it appeared that larger economic impacts might occur, but despite continued uncertainty, progress in opening refineries and restarting pipelines now makes those larger impacts less likely.”
Greater economic punch
Nevertheless, the CBO said, Katrina will pack a greater economic punch than previous natural disasters such as Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which had a more localised effect on the south-east US.
”Katrina’s effects will be greater because of the greater devastation, the long-term flooding of New Orleans (which will preclude immediate rebuilding), and the destruction of energy and port infrastructure,” it said.
September employment figures in New Orleans and other ruined towns along the Gulf Coast will show a big decline of 150 000 to half-a-million, it said.
The CBO noted that major pipelines taking crude products from the Gulf Coast to the rest of the US have largely been restored.
”But three of the major refineries that were shut down may not reopen for more than a month, and petroleum production from some oil rigs in the Gulf will be curtailed for many months.”
However, emergency supplies being released from government crude reserves, coupled with extra fuel arriving from overseas, ”will dampen the adverse effects of the reduction in supply”, the CBO said.
The projected insurance losses do not include flood damage, which in the US is not normally covered by private insurers but by federal policy protection.
”Although no estimates have been published, federal flood insurance payments are also likely to be substantial,” the CBO said.
”Those payments could exceed the programme’s reserves and thus necessitate congressional action,” it warned. Additional payouts on federal crop insurance are also possible.
The CBO said much of the broader economic impact will be felt as consumers divert spending to keep up with the higher gasoline prices that have resulted from Katrina.
Assuming consumers reduce non-gasoline spending, on average, by 40 cents for each dollar increase in petrol, consumption would fall by $38-billion.
”That effect is temporary: as gasoline prices return to pre-Katrina levels, consumption would bounce back, meaning higher GDP growth,” the CBO said. — AFP
