E-mail a friendSen. Mary Landrieu
airdate August 29, 2007
Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu is part of a political family—her father was New Orleans' mayor and her brother is the state's lieutenant governor. Considered a moderate, she's the state's senior senator and first woman elected to a full Senate term. Her committee assignments include Appropriations and Energy and Natural Resources. Landrieu, whose home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, is on a mission to keep the Gulf Coast rebuilding effort alive for both the Democratic and Republican parties.
Sen. Mary Landrieu
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Senator Mary Landrieu back to this program as the nation paused today to remember the victims of Hurricane Katrina two years after the storm. There have been a number of events this week in New Orleans, including one hosted by Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu. The Hope and Recovery Summit was held Monday at the University of New Orleans and attracted a number of presidential contenders from both parties.
Senator Landrieu serves as the chair of the Senate Homeland Securities Subcommittee on Disaster Relief and she joins us tonight from Louisiana. Senator, nice to have you back on the program again.
Sen. Mary Landrieu: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: I know that Katrina two years later is the talk of the day, but I actually want to start with Iraq because I think there's a connection between Iraq and New Orleans. President Bush, as you know, was in New Orleans earlier today, and here's what he had to say: "A lot of people down here have probably wondered whether or not those of us in the federal government not from Louisiana would pay attention to Louisiana or Mississippi, and I hope people understand we do. We're still paying attention - we understand." Close quote.
That's what the president had to say in New Orleans earlier today. Then we read later this afternoon on the wires this little tidbit. You are in Washington all the time; you serve there, obviously, so you know what a trial balloon is. They put this stuff out in advance; they leak this stuff deliberately so as to see how it's going to play to cut down on the shock that's going to happen when the official request actually comes.
So the president says this first in New Orleans and then we read on the wires that the president now plans to ask Congress - that's you - for another $50 billion for the war in Iraq. Another $50 billion. That would bring the spending on the war in Iraq to an average of $3 billion per week - $3 billion per week.
The request, we are told from the wires, from sources - unnamed, of course - this request will be made after the report from General Petraeus is released on how this troop surge is working. What do you make of those two things coming out on the same day? I find it fascinating.
Landrieu: Well, Tavis, this has been an extremely expensive war in many ways - not just the dollar amount but in loss of life, in loss of image around the nation, and frankly, we need a new course. As you know, Democrats are pushing very hard. I don't know what Congress' reaction is going to be. Of course we want to support our soldiers; we have an obligation to support them.
But we just cannot continue this level of spending. One of the things people forget Osama bin Laden said - now, he was the one that attacked the nation, let's remember that, and he's still at large. And one of his quotes is one of the ways that he wants to bring America to its knees is financial ruin. Now we've got to take that very seriously.
We cannot continue this kind of spending and then for Katrina and Rita and the flooding that occurred here, people in my hometown, in my home city, want to say, “My goodness, if we're spending $3 billion a week to stand up a democracy in Iraq, why can't we help the one we already have stood up here in Louisiana? Why can't we build the infrastructure that we have here?”
Now the president, in his defense, has done some things for us. Just last week, another $7 billion announcement for levees. But Tavis, as you know, because you've been to our city and our state, we've got a long way to go.
Tavis: Is there any - in all the strategy that you have employed, the strategy that you've used as the senator from that state, trying to keep the focus, trying to keep the attention on the city and on the region and the recovery - I'll come back to your conference in a moment, but back to your strategy for a moment. With all the strategy you've used to try to keep our focus on that area, does it work to say to the nation that we're spending this kind of money in Iraq and yet we can't get New Orleans back on its feet?
Does that argument work, or is there sort of not just Iraq fatigue - although the president keeps getting the money that he asks for - is there not just Iraq fatigue but moreover, New Orleans, Katrina, Mississippi fatigue?
Landrieu: Well, there is some of that, Tavis, but I think what's happening is as the bridge collapsed in Minnesota and as people are now having the Corps of Engineers report to them all over the country that their levees, too, are weak, as the civil engineering associations continue to give us a D minus for infrastructure. People are fatigued, but they're also very concerned.
And they're saying, “My goodness, don't we have infrastructure needs right here in America?” I think you're going to start hearing more of our presidential candidates talking about this. I know Senator Clinton did when she was here, I've heard Senator Obama talk about it. Even Republican Governor Mike Huckabee talked about how important it was for us to spend more investments in America, getting our infrastructure safe.
And I want to thank everyone - I've got to do that - because the community generally, the volunteers, the faith-based communities, everyone's been helpful, but frankly our government has a long way to go in helping right here in the homeland to rebuild cities or major urban areas after a catastrophic devastation. We're just not as ready as we think we are.
Tavis: Let me go now quickly to your summit held earlier this week at the University of New Orleans. There are five areas that you covered. I want to just mention these five areas and let you tell me why you talked about it and what really came out of the conversation. In no particular order, coastal restoration, levees, and infrastructure. You all talked about that down there.
Landrieu: Absolutely, and it's because, as you know, south Louisiana and the Gulf Coast contribute about $10 billion a year to the federal treasury. That's $10 billion, with oil and gas revenues that come off of our shore, keep the lights on, keep this news program going, and direct receipts to the treasury. We need some of those revenues back here to protect this coast.
America's energy coast, it's a working coast, we've got levees to build, coastal restoration issues. And that will protect not only the city of New Orleans but places south of New Orleans as well as Mississippi and Texas.
Tavis: My friend Tom Joyner, a nationally syndicated radio host, was in New Orleans this morning hosting his live radio show there at a school. He went to a school, specifically a middle school in the Lower Ninth Ward, and one of the issues you all discussed at this summit on the eve of this second anniversary is the issue of education. How we doing?
Landrieu: Well, we're doing better. As you know, one of our big problems in New Orleans and many cities around the nation is we had a failing school system. We had too many of our children not reading, not writing, not doing arithmetic and math and algebra at their grade levels. So anyway, the storm came along, really strained our public school system.
So now we're standing up I think a much better, more entrepreneurial, more choices for parents, higher standards for children. We cannot let our children be in the same kind of old facilities. So today you saw, I think, some new hope of the new kind of public school system that we're building here. And we're very excited about new leadership.
Paul Valez (sp?) has come down from Philadelphia, then through Chicago. I think he's a great leader. We've got a lot of support, actually - a broad-based community supporting new schools. So that will be one great thing that comes out of this hurricane is a brand-new school system in Orleans parish that really serves children and not the bureaucracy.
Tavis: Issue three, we see behind you a beautiful picture of the skyline of downtown New Orleans - the big Superdome one cannot miss behind your left ear there. How you doing on business recovery?
Landrieu: Pretty well. We still have a long way to go, but we lost 20,000 businesses in a weekend and in Louisiana alone 205,000 homes. We lost many churches and many schools. So this is a hard recovery, but our businesses are starting to come back, we've actually reformed the Small Business Administration.
Steve Preston was at our summit talking about all the reforms that the Small Business Administration has made, trying to streamline the process for (unintelligible) companies and minority firms to get more involved with the recovery. And I was at Dooky Chase last night, which you must know very well - one of our most famous restaurants.
Tavis: Very well. (Laughter)
Landrieu: Just Leah Chase with help of John (unintelligible), which is a beautiful partnership that's come together in this city to help Ms. Leah and Mr. Dooky open their restaurant again, and it was terrific. So that's an example. We still have many small businesses to open, but the Saints are leading us back and it's a great work.
Tavis: Back to that skyline. Things look beautiful and calm there in the city when you see a skyline like that, but on the ground we keep reading and hearing that you all have a crime problem out of control yet again, and so one of the issues discussed was criminal justice.
Landrieu: Absolutely. And we need a lot of help across the board. One of the things we need, and I think John Edwards said this when he spoke the other day, if we can have a surge in Baghdad, why not have a surge here in New Orleans to give our police force some extra help to get the situation under control? Chief Riley is doing a fine job but we're losing more officers than we're able to initiate, and we're losing veteran officers.
We have probably 500 more police officers out of maybe 1,600 lose their homes. People don't realize that the first responders were victims themselves, unlike what happened in other places around the country in natural disasters. Our police force lost their homes. So that's not an excuse. We've gotta have a stronger prosecution on the ground, the U.S. attorneys doing what they can to help, we've gotta have a stronger witness protection program to give witnesses the support they need to come forth and testify.
We cannot rebuild a city or region unless people perceive it's safe and until we get some of these criminals off the street, and also start giving young people to respond to in a positive way. And we're trying to do all that, but it's very difficult.
Tavis: Finally, there's no reason to assume that you're gonna get everybody back until they have something to come back to - namely, a place to live. So this issue of housing has been a thorny and a tricky one, particularly against the backdrop of the problems that this Road Home program has had. Tell me how you're doing on the housing front.
Landrieu: Well, there are two big issues to remember - or three, really. First, Louisiana was very short-changed relative to Mississippi and our community development block grant application. So I've got to get back to Washington and ask for our fair share. I will, and I think we'll get it. Then the governor must press harder on getting the money into the hands of homeowners who are still backlogged in a very sort of bureaucratic state-designed program.
They've tried to make it better, but it needs to get better faster. And then finally we've got renters and public housing residents - Maxine Waters passed a good bill out of the House, we've strengthened it, it's now in the Senate. We've got to get that bill passed, and the administration is supporting it and Secretary Jackson is supporting it.
We've got to get that bill through the Senate and onto the president's desk. That'll guarantee everybody a right to return in public housing, we're gonna start focusing on workforce housing which we really need, and then also give us some money for some extra sort of wrap-around services for people coming back into the city that are renters and also trying to get our homeownership rate up higher.
We were a city that just didn't have enough homeowners, and we want to give people a chance for the American dream, work their way up into the middle class and beyond. So it's a lot of work, Tavis, I just can't tell you. It's gonna take a while, but the city looks and felt so much better today as people really were looking forward, not backward.
Tavis: So much to be hopeful about, and yet so much still to be done there in the Crescent City.
Landrieu: Correct.
Tavis: The Democrat Senator from Louisiana, Mary Landrieu. Senator, nice to have you on. All the best to you in the coming months and years on bringing this city back.
Landrieu: Thank you so much.
Tavis: Thank you.
Back to August 29, 2007