| | | Americas & Beyond | January 2009
New White House Site Slams Bush Andy Barr - The Politico go to original
| Shine Martin of New Orleans looking grateful that Barack Obama is now president. On the White House web site, Obama promises to deliver on the broken promises of the Bush administration to rebuild New Orleans. (Reuters) | | The new White House website unveiled by President Barack Obama's team Tuesday includes a shot at former President Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina.
Under the "agenda" portion of the site regarding Katrina, it reads: "President Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur."
"President Obama swiftly responded to Hurricane Katrina," the statement on the site continues. "Citing the Bush Administration's 'unconscionable ineptitude' in responding to Hurricane Katrina, then-Senator Obama introduced legislation requiring disaster planners to take into account the specific needs of low-income hurricane victims."
The site also points out that Obama "visited thousands of Hurricane survivors in the Houston Convention Center and later took three more trips to the region" and worked with the Congressional Black Caucus to help rebuild in the aftermath of Katrina.
In interviews prior to leaving the White House, Bush defended the federal government's response to the hurricane.
"The truth of the matter is the response was pretty darn quick if you think about the fact that the Coast Guard and a lot of brave kids were pulling 30,000 people off of roofs as soon as the storm passed, as soon as they found people on those roofs," Bush said during an interview with CNN last week.
Bush also said his lowest point in office came when he heard "people saying George Bush is a racist because of the response" to the hurricane. |
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