Bush: Spending cuts, no tax hikes, for Katrina

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Friday the federal government must slash unnecessary spending to pay for Gulf Coast reconstruction, but he ruled out raising taxes. “You bet it will cost money, but I’m confident we can handle it,” Bush said.

“It’s going to cost whatever it’s going to cost, and we’re going to be wise about the money we spend,” Bush said a day after laying out an expensive plan for rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast without spelling out how he would pay for it.

“The key question is to make sure the costs are wisely spent and that we work with Congress to make sure that we are able to manage our budget in a wise way, and that is going to mean cutting other programs,” he added.

Some conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill are increasingly worried about the growing costs of rebuilding the coastal area devasted by Hurricane Katrina.

Some estimates have put the cost at more than $200 billion. The White House and Congress already have rushed $62.3 billion in emergency funds to the region.

The president made clear raising taxes was not an option to help cover the costs.

‘We should not raise taxes’
“We got to maintain economic growth, and therefore we should not raise taxes,” Bush said, noting Americans were already paying “a tax in essence” because of higher gasoline prices. “And we don’t need to be taking more money out of their pocket.”

Bush spoke at a news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin hours after attending a prayer service in memory of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Addressing religious and political leaders at the National Cathedral, the president vowed to help rebuild the region with an eye toward wiping out the persistent poverty and racial injustice that exist there.

“As we clear away the debris of a hurricane, let us also clear away the legacy of inequality,” he said during a national prayer service with other political leaders and religious figures from the affected region at the National Cathedral.”

Confronting ‘unmentionable issues’
Before Bush’s remarks, Bishop T.D. Jakes, head of 30,000-member Potter’s House church in Dallas, delivered a powerful sermon in which he called upon Americans to “dare to discuss the unmentionable issues that confront us” and to not rest until the poor are raised to an acceptable living standard.

“Katrina, perhaps, she has done something to this nation that needed to be done,” Jakes said. “We can no longer be a nation that overlooks the poor and the suffering, that continues past the ghetto on our way to the Mardi Gras.”

Bush, faced with continuing questions about whether help would have been sent more quickly to the storm zone if most victims had not been poor and black, echoed those themes in his brief remarks.

Bush vows to seize opportunity
"Some of the greatest hardships fell upon citizens already facing lives of struggle, the elderly, the vulnerable and the poor,” he said. “As we rebuild homes and businesses, we will renew our promise as a land of equality and decency and one day Americans will look back at the response to Hurricane Katrina and say that our country grew not only in prosperity but in character and justice.”

FREE VIDEO 'We’re prayerful' Sept. 16: ‘We mourn with those who mourn,” says President Bush, during the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance service for victims of Hurricane Katrina. MSNBC

Bush spoke as administration officials in Washington elaborated on his pledge Thursday in a nationally televised speech to undertake a massive reconstruction effort in the hurricane-damaged areas.

White House officials said taxpayers will pay the bill for the program and acknowledged that the huge expense will worsen the nation’s budget deficit.

With disaster costs estimated at $200 billion and beyond, Al Hubbard, director of Bush’s National Economic Council, said, “It’s coming from the American taxpayer.” He acknowledged the costs would swell the deficit — projected at $333 billion for the current year before Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast.

Claude Allen, the president’s domestic policy adviser, said the administration had not identified any budget cuts to offset the disaster expense.

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