the katrina gravy train

louisiana lawmakers begin with $40 billion as a "starting point"

"about 10 times the annual Corps budget for the entire nation, or 16 times the amount the Corps has said it would need to protect New Orleans from a Category 5 hurricane."
[snip]
"The overall Corps budget for fiscal 2005 was $4 billion, and Corps officials have estimated that they could upgrade the New Orleans flood protection system to defend against a Category 5 storm for about $2.5 billion."
[snip]
"This bill boggles the mind," said Steve Ellis, a water resources expert at Taxpayers for Common Sense. "Brazen doesn't begin to describe it. The Louisiana delegation is using Katrina as an excuse to resurrect a laundry list of pork projects."
[snip]
"But the list of potential projects also includes a 50-year-old plan for a $750 million lock for the New Orleans Industrial Canal, a project rated the fifth-worst Corps boondoggle in the country by an alliance of taxpayer advocates and environmentalists. It also includes an effort to deepen the Port of Iberia for oil and gas tankers, a project that the Corps had concluded would provide only 30 cents of economic benefit for each dollar expended by taxpayers."

meanwhile, predictably, the lawyers are salivating at the lawsuit opportunities