Will Congress rethink commitments and costs?

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON - “The era of big government is over,” President Bill Clinton declared nine years ago in his State of the Union address in the wake of the Republican takeover of Congress.

On Tuesday as members of Congress began to grapple with colossal cost of aiding people displaced by hurricane Katrina, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. and some of her colleagues in both parties said that the federal government would need to take on immense new responsibilities:

• Medicaid health insurance for many, if not most, of the low-income people who had been evacuated from New Orleans and other Gulf Coast locales. “That’s going to strap a lot of states, including my own,” Clinton said.
• Federal reimbursement to cities and states which have taken in people from the hurricane-devastated areas.
• New federal grants to build housing for low-income people, an idea mentioned by Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla.
• Extra social services, mental health services and grief counseling for people displaced from the Gulf Coast.

The net effect of Katrina will be to significantly increase domestic spending.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the cost for taxpayer may exceed $150 billion — which would be about a six percent increase on top of current annual outlays of about $2.5 trillion.

“When I was with the governor of Texas yesterday he made it clear they’ve got 250,000 people (from hurricane-hit areas) — they can’t take any more,” Clinton told reporters Tuesday. “They’re looking for some help to deal with what they’re confronting. I’m sure that’s going to be true for all the states.”

Telethons and concerts won't suffice
“You can’t do this strictly on telethons and concerts, as wonderful as they are,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.

The question raised by all this new domestic spending: Will the hurricane mark a historic turning away in congressional support for overseas commitments such as Iraq and Afghanistan?

Clinton has been a supporter of the Iraq war and the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

But in contrast to what many of her Senate colleagues were saying Tuesday, Clinton indicated she thought Katrina might require what used to be called “an agonizing re-appraisal” of overseas commitments.

“I don’t believe we are putting the American people first in this country,” she said. “I don’t know that we can do that unless we have a more sensible policy that looks at the tax cuts for wealthy people that the administration seems determined to enshrine in permanency and the additional tax cuts and spending cuts the administration wants. We have to look at all of our spending. I don’t see how we can be expected to cut $10 billion out of Medicaid.”

She framed the question as “what do we need to do on behalf of the American people,” putting emphasis on the word “American.”

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