Today is the anniversary of the most transparent attack against the working poor by a government in my memory: the suspension of the Davis-Bacon act for all the counties/parishes affected by hurricane Katrina. In a stunningly cynical move, Bush argued in the proclamation itself that this suspension would "result in greater assistance to these devastated communities and will permit the employment of thousands of additional individuals."

Of course, it wasn't just Bush. There was significant pressure for him to do this within his own party.

Over 30 GOP representatives sent the President a letter demanding that he do this, supported by the chair of the RSC. It was, of course for the noblest of motives:

"We must ensure that a catastrophe of nature does not become a catastrophe of debt for our children and grandchildren," said Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.), chairman of the RSC.

"We must look for ways to pay for this enormous undertaking and suspending the prevailing wage requirements of the Davis-Bacon Act during the initial reconstruction effort is a good place to start."

Wow.  I mean...wow. That whole "catastrophe of debt" ship has already sailed. And while Davis-Bacon was re-instated on Oct 26, I somehow don't think it has been the major culprit in the post-Katrina rebuilding waste. As Naomi Klein has aptly noted, the government money is inordinately tied up in funding the growth of the Disaster Capitalism Complex, which has turned the Department of Homer Simpson into a "glorified temp agency": 

Under the Bush administration, whole sectors of the government, most notably the Department of Homeland Security, have been turned into glorified temp agencies, with essential functions contracted out to private companies...

Largely under the public radar, billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on the construction of a privatized disaster-response infrastructure: the Shaw Group's new state-of-the-art Baton Rouge headquarters, Bechtel's battalions of earthmoving equipment, Blackwater USA's 6,000-acre campus in North Carolina (complete with paramilitary training camp and 6,000-foot runway)...

[this complex] has been built almost exclusively with money from public contracts, including the training of its staff (overwhelmingly former civil servants, politicians and soldiers). Yet it is all privately owned; taxpayers have absolutely no control over it or claim to it." (emph mine)

This is business. I'm continually amazed by the seemingly deliberate blindness involved in conflating "private contracts" with "shrinking government." I mean the whole point of shrinking government is (isn't it?) to make it cheaper and more efficient. But if the governemnt is paying private contractors for their infrastructure investments and massive profits, then it is obvious that it is more expensive and less efficient.

Actually, Matt Yglesias puts this better:

There really are certain pathologies associated with government work. When money is allocated by a political process rather than a market process it tends to be allocated less efficiently. The trouble with privatization as a remedy to this problem is that it . . . doesn't remedy the problem, the money is still being allocated by a political process. The only change is to generate profits for a series of well-connected contracting firms that, in turn, give money to the GOP.

New Orleans has been hurt disproportionately by this idiocy because it affected both the disaster response and the recovery. But every single American gets affected by paying extra money for low quality.