Vice President Joe Biden says stimulus package is helping rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast
by Jonathan Tilove, The Times-Picayune
Monday August 24, 2009, 6:00 AM
AP photo
Vice President Joe Biden meets with members of the White House economic team earlier this month to discuss the economic impact of the Recovery Act.
WASHINGTON — Republican members of the Louisiana congressional delegation opposed it; Gov. Bobby Jindal used a nationally televised address to deride it; and many in New Orleans saw it as a missed opportunity to help the city’s hurricane recovery.
But the Obama administration’s $786 billion stimulus package is contributing in important ways to rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, Vice President Joe Biden told The Times-Picayune in advance of the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
Biden’s comments marked the administration’s most vigorous and detailed defense of the stimulus bill in the face of local concern that the measure ignored the needs of a community recovering from the nation’s costliest disaster.
“A lot of money in the stimulus act — covering everything from construction, infrastructure to education — is money that is discretionary, and the discretionary money is designed to go to the places with the most need or the most innovation,” Biden said…
Retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Doug O’Dell, who was coordinator of the federal Office of Gulf Coast Rebuilding under President Bush when the Obama administration took over, said he had advised Janet Napolitano, before she took command of the Department of Homeland Security, that the new administration should use the stimulus package as an opportunity to transcend ongoing funding battles between FEMA and Louisiana officials in a number of high-profile situations.
Doug O’Dell
Advised Obama administration to use stimulus money to rebuild N.O. health care system
Among those situations, O’Dell said, were “Charity, Tulane, LSU Health Science, criminal justice facilities, Orleans Parish sewer and water” — all of which he said could have been rolled into a $1.5 billion “silver bullet to make all those problems go away, and still minuscule in the whole panoply” of the stimulus package.
Obama assigned Biden to oversee implementation of the two-year Recovery Act, which was signed into law in February. All the Republicans in the Louisiana delegation voted against the stimulus package, and Gov. Bobby Jindal rejected some monies that he thought “would ultimately burden the state with greater costs.”
“We only had a couple of governors who weren’t crazy about receiving billions of dollars,” Biden said.
But, he said, “we’ve announced over $3.3 billion just out of the Recovery Act for Louisiana, a significant portion of that — $2.2 billion — has actually been made available, and they’ve spent about a half a billion so far, and they are about on track as other states, . . . and I was really pleased, and I mean this sincerely, genuinely pleased that the governor has embraced this.”
‘Real-life dollars’
The Recovery Act includes 22 highway and transit projects in Orleans Parish, for which more than $50 million have been obligated.
“Two of the largest road projects are repairing hurricane damage (and) slated to begin this fall, likely November,” Biden said. “Twelve million bucks for Fleur de Lis Drive, near the levee breach at the 17th Street Canal — I’ve been stuck in traffic there — and $9.6 million for Earhart Boulevard, . . . actual real-life dollars going to projects that have been stalled since the hurricane.”
New Orleans has also received $7.6 million to be distributed this fall to those at risk of becoming homeless.
Biden also singled out a $5 million neighborhood-improvement grant for the Holy Cross neighborhood in the Lower 9th Ward.
For the full article: http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/08/_4309291_doug_odell_advised.html
Jonathan Tilove can be reached at jtilove@timespicayune.com or 202.383.7827.