RUBE GOLDBERG RECONSTRUCTION:

Rebuilding plan paving way for conservative goals (Rick Klein, September 25, 2005, Boston Globe)

Republican lawmakers in Congress have tried repeatedly in recent years to allow children to use federally funded vouchers to attend private schools. They have been defeated seven times since 1998.

At least nine times in the past decade, Republicans sought to repeal or undermine a Depression-era law that requires federal contractors to pay the ''prevailing wage" in the region they are working in. None of the efforts succeeded.

But now the GOP is poised to realize both of those goals. President Bush's reconstruction package for the Gulf Coast region devastated by Hurricane Katrina includes nearly $500 million for vouchers that children can use at private schools anywhere in the nation. And Bush declared a ''national emergency" to waive the prevailing wage law during the cleanup, freeing contractors to pay construction workers as little as the minimum wage, rather than the $8 to $10 prevailing wages in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi.

As the federal government's response to Katrina takes shape, the White House and Congress are enacting or seeking to pass a wide range of policies that have been consistently rejected by Congress, despite Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

Far from marking the end of uberconservatism (with umlouts and a lightning bolt), Katrina is letting conservatism triumph under cover of compassion.

BTW: If Andrew Moore and ted welter could e-mail me I'll send your books.

MORE:
Liberals and Conservatives Hitch Wagons to Recovery (Ronald Brownstein, September 25, 2005, LA Times)

Both Democrats and Republicans increasingly view the battered landscape of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast as a giant laboratory for testing their competing domestic policy agendas.

Politicians and policy advocates across the ideological spectrum — John Edwards and Newt Gingrich, the Sierra Club and the Wall Street Journal editorial page — are trying to jump-start new ideas, and revive old ones, by linking them to the massive post-Katrina reconstruction.

For Republicans, the proposals include initiatives such as tax cuts for business, education aid that would follow students to private schools and the relaxation of federal environmental regulations.

For Democrats, the priorities include expanded housing assistance for the needy, more generous income support for the working poor and new efforts to promote renewable energy and mass transit.

What both sides share is that they see the massive reconstruction as a way to demonstrate the value of programs they hope will be adopted nationwide.

"It is once in a generation that an opportunity like this comes along, where the status quo is called into question and where the policy community and Congress can look at it, change it and improve it," said Michael Franc, vice president for government relations at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "Given how hard it is to change that status quo … every policy organization, every think-tanker, every ex-Cabinet officer is going to have a vision, and even a plan, of what we should be doing."

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 25, 2005 8:29 AM