Text 2006, 498 rader
Skriven 2006-01-12 23:33:14 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (0601123) for Thu, 2006 Jan 12
====================================================
===========================================================================
President Visits Mississippi, Discusses Gulf Coast Reconstruction
===========================================================================

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
January 12, 2006

President Visits Mississippi, Discusses Gulf Coast Reconstruction
St. Stanislaus College
St. Louis, Mississippi


˙˙˙˙˙Fact Sheet: A Commitment to Continued Recovery and Rebuilding in the
Gulf Coast
˙˙˙˙˙In Focus: Hurricane Recovery

1:47 P.M. CST

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. Please be seated. Haley said that it's
protocol not to introduce the President. Well, that shows what he knows
about protocol. (Laughter.) He just introduced me. (Laughter.) Thanks for
having me back. My first observation is, it's good to see -- to be able to
look in people's eyes and not see them all bloodshot. (Laughter.)

I can remember coming here, the times I came, and looked hard in people's
eyes and saw a sense of desperation and worry and deep, deep concern about
the future. I'm sure there is still concern about the future, but the eyes
have cleared up. There's a sense of optimism. There's a hope, there's a
little bounce in people's step. I'm not surprised; the people down here
have showed incredible courage. And I want to thank you for showing the
rest of our country what it means to survive an incredible hardship with
high spirits. (Applause.)

Your Governor has done a magnificent job. He went up to Washington --
(applause.) You know, it's nice of him to give me the credit to sign the
bill. It's nice of him to compliment Congressman Taylor, who deserves to be
complimented, and compliment -- (applause) -- and Congressman Chip
Pickering -- (applause) -- both of whom are here, and I thank them for
coming. It's wise of him to compliment Senator Lott and Senator Cochran.
(Laughter.) And he's right to compliment them. But the truth of the matter
is, the person who deserve the biggest compliment, in my judgment, is the
man who brought the will of the Mississippi people, the needs of the
Mississippi people up to Washington and fashioned one heck of a piece of
legislation for the people of this important state -- thank you, Governor,
for your hard work. (Applause.)

And I want to thank Marsha for being here, as well. I don't know how you
put up with him for all these years. (Laughter.) You must be a patient
soul. But he married well, just like me. And speaking about that, Laura
sends her best wishes to all of you all. She's looking forward to coming
back down here. She's not going to believe the difference between the last
time she was here and today.

It's hard sometimes, unless you've got a perspective. I have the
perspective of having spent some time here, but not all my time. And I can
remember what was, and now what is, and I can see what's going to be, too.
And it's going to be a better Gulf Coast of Mississippi. (Applause.)

I want to thank Roy Bernardi, who is the Deputy Secretary of HUD. He's
going to have some stuff to do to make sure this part of the world
rebounds. I like your Mayors. They're down-to-earth people. They are good,
solid people. (Applause.) Mayor Eddie Favre. You know, one time a buddy of
mine said, when the baseball players and owners couldn't figure out an
agreement and they went on strike and quit Major League Baseball -- he
said, "I'm never going back to a baseball game for 10 years." And I said,
sure, you know. And he's a great baseball fan. And, sure enough, last year
was his 10th year and he finally went to a game. The reason I bring that up
is Eddie said, "I'm not going to wear long pants" -- (laughter) -- and I'm
saying to myself, one of these days, the President is going to show up and
Eddie sure enough will put on long pants. (Laughter.) I didn't know him
very well. (Laughter.) I arrived here at this important school and he's got
short pants on. Eddie, I like a man who sticks to his guns. (Laughter and
applause.) Thanks for hosting us.

And so I'm standing in the White House at a Christmas reception, and in
walks Tommy Longo. He's the Mayor of Waveland, of course. And he had on a
fantastic suit. (Laughter.) I nearly fell out. (Laughter.) Tommy Longo in a
suit? (Laughter.) I said, "Where did you get that thing?" He said, "It's
amazing what you can find in the rubbish." (Laughter.)

I've learned something about the Mayors up and down the Gulf Coast. You've
got some young Mayors east of here who have been in office, what, three or
four months, and the storm hit. They were incredibly tested -- Pascagoula
and other places. You got some veterans who have been around for a while,
never dreamt they'd see a day like the day they saw. But whether they're
veterans or rookies, all of them have stood strong. All of them have
rallied with the first responders. All of them have shown great compassion
to the people. I am proud of your local Mayors, your local governments,
people like Rocky Pullman of the Hancock Board of Supervisors, the people
working in these counties. You got some good folks down here. And one of
the reasons why I'm confident about your recovery is because you've elected
good people to take on the job. (Applause.)

Finally, I want to thank Brother Talbot and Brother Hingle of this
fantastic school. (Applause.) Thanks for hosting us. Tommy Longo was in the
class of '75. I hope that means you didn't lower you academic standards in
that year. (Laughter.) He and old Doc Blanchard, they told me. Doc
Blanchard went here, in case you didn't know it, the Heisman Trophy winner
who carried the leather for West Point. And one of the things the Brother
told me -- he said, we wanted to make sure we saved the Heisman Trophy that
Doc Blanchard had made sure was housed here at this facility.

But I do want to thank you all for letting us come by. Thanks for your --
being in education; really an important part of the future of this state
and this country, to make sure people get a good education.

I stood in Jackson Square early on in -- after the storm hit, and I said
we're not just going to survive, but thrive. By that I meant, it's one
thing to kind of ride it out; it's another thing to take out of the harm
that came, convert this into a better life. I said we're not just going to
cope, but we'll overcome. I meant what I said. I couldn't have said that if
I didn't have confidence, though, in the people in the local area that have
such a spirit to be able to do so.

I'm here to report to you some of the progress made and to let you know
that people in faraway places like Washington, D.C. still hear you and care
about you. Signing all the legislation I've signed, the federal government
has committed $85 billion so far to helping folks and to help rebuild the
Gulf Coast of -- (applause.) Of that $85 billion, about $25 billion has
been spent. So $85 billion is available, $25 billion of it is already in
the pipeline -- that's $60 billion more coming your way.

Part of the strategy to make sure that the rebuilding effort after the
recovery effort worked well was to say to people like Haley, and the
Governor or Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans, you all develop a
strategy. It's your state, it's your region, you know the people better
than people in Washington -- develop the rebuilding strategy. And the role
of the federal government is to coordinate with you and to help.

I thought that was an important first statement to make, when people began
to wonder what life would be like after the storm hit. My view is, and a
lot of my political philosophy is based on, the local folks know better
than the folks in Washington, D.C. (Applause.) I remember when Haley
invited me down, and he said -- I think we were in a tent at that time, and
there wasn't a lot of electricity, it was like an old-time daytime revival
without electricity. It was hot in the tent -- it was the first meeting, I
think, at least the first called meeting of the commission headed by Jim
Barksdale. Citizens from all walks of life, all occupations, all aimed at
one thing: putting together a strategy that will help this part of the
world become even better than it was before.

I have an obligation to make sure that the federal government responds and
coordinates and stays in touch with not only the commission and the
Governor, but local folks, as well. And I picked a fellow that I trust, a
person who's had a lot of experience, a person who understands how people
think down here -- after all, he is from Texas -- he understands urban life
and he understands rural life, and he knows the importance of county
commissioners -- you call them county supervisors, I guess. He's a guy
who's a good listener and he's got my full confidence. And that's my
friend, Don Powell, who's with me today. He's going to be the federal
coordinator. (Applause.) His job is to come down here and listen and report
back.

And I recognize there are some rough spots, and I'm going to mention some
of them here in a minute -- and we're going to work to make them as smooth
as possible. The first challenge we had after the storm hit was to take
care of the people that were displaced. Millions of people, or over a
million people evacuated and scattered. It was an amazing period in our
history, when you think about it. One day people's lives are turned upside
down and they're looking for help and they're looking for compassion -- and
they found it. People found it in churches, in synagogues, in community
centers, in private homes. It's an amazing part of our history when you
think about it. It's like there's a great capacity to absorb hurt in our
country, because we've got individuals that are so decent and honorable.

The government had a role to play, and that was to get money in people's
pockets. I mean, when you have to evacuate, you don't have time to plan.
And so one of the first things we did was we got $2,000 in people's pockets
as quickly as possible to help them. In other words, it was a response
geared toward the individual. We had a special designation for all
evacuees, so they can become available for Medicaid, or family services, or
the federal programs. The idea was to get a response as quickly as possible
to people who are scattered all over the country so they could -- to help
get their feet on the ground.

We gave waivers to states. In other words, we kind of deregulated the
system so states could respond quickly to the people who needed help. We
provided 700,000 households with rental help. In other words, the goal is
for people to be back in their homes, in a home they call their own. That's
the goal. But in the meantime, we had to deal with people evacuated and
people without homes. And so a part of the plan has been to provide
temporary housing with rental vouchers: $390 million went out as HUD
vouchers for a group of people that qualified.

I can remember people hollering for trailers. We became the largest
consumer of trailers probably in the history of mankind. (Laughter.) And I
know it was slow to begin with. The production needed to be ramped up, and,
frankly, the government crowded out other purchasers in order to set
priorities for people down in this part of the world. We've now put out
61,000 trailers, and there are more in the pipeline. I was asking Haley,
does he have a feel for how many more we need, and he said, we're getting
close to the end, but there's still a need. And we understand that. And the
manufacturing is making -- we put cruise ships out at one point to help
people house on a temporary basis -- particularly in New Orleans, so that
we could get the police and the firefighters a place to stay, so they could
do their job.

People ended up in hotel rooms. At one time there was about 80-some
thousand people in hotel rooms. It's now down to 25,000 families in hotel
rooms. We're in the process of trying to locate every single family and
provide the rental assistance help for them, so they can move from the
hotel into rental housing -- all aimed, by the way, at providing some kind
of housing until the permanent housing market takes off. We're trying to
bridge from being an evacuee to a person in a place until their own home
gets ready to move into.

And so what can we do? Well, first thing is we can focus on repairing
homes. That's not going to do you very good down here in Waveland. I
understand that. Tommy and I and the Governor and Marsha just drove by --
there's no homes to repair. It's just been flattened. That's what the
people of America have got to understand. Sometimes hurricanes go through
and there's a home and a structure you can maybe put a roof on, or do
something -- not here. Our fellow citizens have got to know when this
hurricane hit, it just obliterated everything, it just flattened it.

But in parts of the hurricane zone, there's repairs that can be done. FEMA
assistance will help with that. SBA loans have gone out to about -- for
about $2.1 billion to help people repair their homes. Now, the most
innovative approach, however, to getting the homes rebuilt is the CDBG
grants that Haley Barbour negotiated on behalf of the people of
Mississippi. That's government initials for direct money to help people who
weren't able to get their insurance to pay them off. (Applause.)

I remember being down in Biloxi. I think it was my first trip. And it was
hot and it was steamy. An old lady walked up to me and said to me -- I
said, "How are you doing?" And she looked at me and she said, "Not worth a
darn." (Laughter.) And I said, "Well, I don't blame you." She said, "I've
been paying all my life for my insurance. Every time that bill came I paid
it. Every single month. And all of a sudden the storm hit, Mr. President,
and I came time to collect, and they told me, no." And she was plenty
unhappy and she was looking for anybody she could be unhappy with, and I
just happened to be the target. (Laughter.) I think Gene was with me then,
I might have shared the story with Gene about that.

One way to handle the issue -- I know you got a lawsuit here; I'm not going
to talk about the lawsuit. But Haley did something innovative, which was
take the CDBG grants -- a lot of money for Mississippi, and going to help
the people do the job that many think the insurance companies should have
done in the first place. (Applause.)

Having said that, the government has paid out $12 billion in flood
insurance. For those who had flood insurance, the government is making good
on its -- on the bargain with the people. If you got an FHA loan, your loan
will be forgiven for a year. In other words, there is an attempt to try to
make sure that things are being done so that we can -- people can get back
in their homes, and people can get to be rebuilding.

There's going to be a building boom down here; there just is. It's going to
be an exciting time for people. One of the real challenges is whether or
not people are going to have the skill set necessary to be able to meet the
needs of the people. Are there going to be enough electricians, enough
plumbers, enough roofers? But you're going to have yourself a building
boom, you watch. It will be work -- people are going to be working hard
here.

And Don Powell and I, to this end, met with a group of leaders in
Washington, D.C. from building trade unions and businesses, and the whole
idea was to come up with a strategy to make sure people have got the skills
necessary to fill the jobs which are going to exist. See, our goal, and I
know it's the Governor's goal, is to make sure the jobs first go to
Mississippi people when it comes to rebuilding this -- (applause.) And
Mississippi businesses. And we want this opportunity to be an opportunity
where minority-owned businesses and women-owned businesses have a chance to
flourish. An ownership society has got to be a part of a new vision, where
people from all walks of life can say, I'm owning my own business, I'm
operating my own business, I'm owning my own home.

It's a fantastic opportunity. And -- but it's not going to work unless
people have the skill set necessary to be able to fill those jobs and to be
able to provide for the -- to meet the consumer demand. And so the idea is
-- and Powell is going to work on this strategy -- is to work with your
community college system, or the building trades, and have centers where
people can go to learn how to get the skills necessary to fill the jobs
which are coming. They're coming. It's going to be an exciting time down
here, just so long as you're able to get enough material and enough labor.

One of the important -- and by the way, speaking about jobs, not only we
got to make sure people have the skills necessary to fill the jobs, the
federal government has got a lot of facilities down here, and there's a lot
of federal employees in this part of the world. We're going to rebuild the
federal facilities so that the people will be able to work. (Applause.)

This recovery is going to be led by the private sector, however; the
federal government is going to help. And $85 billion is a good -- I would
call that "help" -- so far. But the truth of the matter is, the jobs and
the quality of life, the recovery, is going to be led by the private
sector. I was asking Haley about some of the industries down here, and he
told me, for example, at the year end, a casino opened. I mean, it's
remarkable. If you'd have seen what I -- I'm sure you saw what it looked
like up and down this coast, and all of the sudden, there's businesses and
people are thriving, people are beginning to work. It's happening. It's the
private sector that's going to carry much of the recovery.

Congress did a smart thing, in my judgment -- was to provide tax incentives
for businesses who are in this part of the world. They provide tax
incentives for small businesses to expense up to $200,000 of investment and
private -- and incentive for all businesses to provide a 50-percent bonus
depreciation for investment made. What I'm telling you is, it's kind of
economic talk for saying, if somebody spends money in an investment in this
part of the world, they get a tax incentive to do so. In other words, if
you're able to make the tax code attract capital so people invest, it means
you're more likely to be able to find work here. It goes on -- and again, I
want to thank the members of Congress for working on that. I think it's
going to make a big difference.

If you're a small business owner -- we just met today, by the way, with
some small business owners in New Orleans. And one of the things that
became loud and clear to me there was that because a lot of people haven't
moved back into the area, and if you're a small business owner, there's no
customers, so you have no cash flow, which makes it awfully difficult to
survive. There are SBA loans for this. And I understand for some the word
"SBA" means "slow bureaucratic paperwork." (Laughter.) I hear it loud and
clear. I will tell you that SBA has put out about $470 million worth of SBA
loans. In other words, the loans are going out.

But this small agency has been overwhelmed. And so Don Powell is working on
an interesting idea, and that is to work with the local bankers, people who
understand the local customer, as to how to become the agent for the SBA to
get money out the door to help small businesses manage their cash flow
needs until the customer base comes back. (Applause.)

The other thing that happened quickly -- and I'm real proud of your folks
down here -- was that the energy sector rebounded unbelievably fast. This
part of the world is really important for national security and economic
security of the United States of America. Remember when the storms hit, a
lot of folks were really worried about the price of crude oil and gasoline.
We, fortunately -- we just did two things I thought were wise.

One, we suspended reformulated gasoline rules, which enabled us to import
gasoline from Europe, which helped to take the pressure off the market. And
the price of gasoline, although it went up, didn't go up nearly as high as
a lot of people thought, and is now heading back down, thank goodness, for
people who are working for a living. And the price of crude oil stayed
reasonable because we opened up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. I was
confident in being able to do that because I knew how fast this industry
could move if just given a chance. The suspension of some regulations to
help these refineries and these gas processing plants get up on their feet
was important. In other words, if you can get government out of the way,
amazing things can happen sometimes in the private -- (applause.)

And so I want to thank those of you working in the energy industry for
doing what you're doing. I remember going to the plant -- I think Haley was
with me -- went to the plant in Pascagoula. And we had people there camped
out there working as hard as they could to get the refineries up, so that
our citizens from all around the country would be able to have gasoline at
a reasonable price. And these people worked hour after hour after hour, and
did the nation a great service. In the meantime, we did our part -- tried
to do our part, to make sure that we cleaned out the waterways so that the
ships could move better. Our Coast Guard, by the way, provided invaluable
service here in this part of the country. (Applause.)

Part of the recovery of this part of the world is going to be when you get
your infrastructure up and running. And I can remember first choppering
over here and seeing the incredible devastation done to the bridges and
highways. First of all, there has been some incredible construction done.
The Slidell Bridge there, to the west of you, got up in record time. It's
amazing what happens when you provide a completion bonus for people doing
work. (Laughter.)

And I know you're concerned about the I-90 bridge. But they're getting
ready to start on it, as I understand. And the bills I've signed provide
$2.3 billion for repair of highways and bridges in this part of the world.
That's going to provide not only jobs, but it's going to make the quality
of life come back to what it was. You're dependent upon good highways and
good bridges in this part of the world. The government recognized that and
put the money out there available for reimbursing the states when they get
these highway projects moving.

One of the really interesting things that happened was education, how the
country responded for the kids who have been moved around. And school
districts all over America took children from Louisiana and Mississippi and
helped educate them. It was really remarkable to watch the education system
rise to the challenge. In the bill there is $1.6 billion worth of operating
money. It was money to help these schools stay afloat; it was to reimburse
school districts for taking in the children who had evacuated to their part
of the world. That's in addition to the federal commitment to replace every
school. In other words, part of the commitment is that if your school got
destroyed, the federal government will help rebuild the school, or will
rebuild the school.

Plus we understood that there was a lot of kids that were going to higher
education and these -- higher education institutions were affected by the
storm, obviously, and they were allowed to retain their federal aid, even
though children weren't going to school. In other words, we made a
concerted effort to help these schools to cope with the crisis. We're going
to make a concerted effort to help the schools deal with the long-term
reconstruction as a result of the crisis.

Ninety-three percent of the schools here in Mississippi are up and running,
and it's an amazing feat in four months' time. It's a great credit, again,
to your Governor and your education institution; but, more importantly,
it's a great credit to the teachers and superintendents and principals of
your local schools. (Applause.)

Finally, the first issue I was confronted with as the President was debris.
I remember the meeting very well when the Mayor showed up and said, we
can't possibly say to our people things are going to get better, so long as
we got piles of debris lying around. It was not only a practical issue, but
it was a psychological issue. And I can understand -- I mean, I understood
right off the bat what they were talking about. And we had a slow start,
because we had a little bit of a -- we had an issue of how to get debris
off of private property. And, thankfully, there was some creative work done
here at the local and state level, with the federal government -- it really
was -- as to how to deal with the liability issue.

I don't want to go into the law; I'm not even a lawyer. Got too many of
them up there in Washington, anyway. (Applause.) But my point is, is that
by listening to the local folks, and by being flexible about how to deal
with an important issue like debris, we're making pretty good progress. Out
of 42 million cubic yards of debris, 27 million have been removed.

Now, there's still debris. It's estimated about 15 million cubic foot --
cubic yards of debris left. But there's a certain momentum that's
gathering. Haley believes that by the end of March, we can get most of the
debris off of the public property. In other words, they're making progress.

Don Powell's job is, to the extent that the federal government is
contracting out, we want to make sure that they just don't hustle when the
President shows up, that they're hustling all the time, because the
rebuilding and rebirth of this area is really going to depend in large
measure to getting these lots clean, to getting your public access roads
cleaned up, getting that debris out of people's sight. There's something --
there's a certain confidence to be gained when you see this beautiful
countryside cleared of the damage of Katrina. Things have changed a lot
when it comes to debris. It looks a lot different, a whole lot different.
And we got more work to be done and we're going to stay on it until it gets
done.

And so we've done a lot and there's a lot more to do, but there's a certain
optimism and hope that's coming. I hope you feel that. (Applause.) You've
come a long way in four months. Seems like an eternity to you, I know.
Seems like a lot of time for a lot of people to have gone through what you
went through. Four months is not all that long and a lot has happened in
that four-month period. And a lot more is going to happen in the next four
months, and then the next four months. I can't wait to come back, and keep
coming back and seeing the progress that's being made.

We've learned some lessons about Katrina, and we're going to analyze every
lesson learned. Obviously, the federal response in parts of this devastated
area could have been a lot better. We want to know how to make them better.
We want to make sure that when there's a catastrophe of any kind, this
government, at the federal government level, is capable of dealing with it,
in conjunction with the state and local governments.

There's going to be some lessons learned about having agencies that get
overwhelmed by the size of a storm, agencies whose job it is to help people
get on their feet and maybe aren't able to do it quite as efficiently as
some would like. Those are the lessons we're going to continually analyze.
That's what you ought to expect of those of us who have been given the high
honor of serving you -- to constantly look for ways to do things better.
And I just want to assure you, we are. We are. (Applause.)

But there's some other lessons learned where we don't need to change: the
lesson of courage. We saw great courage. I'll never forget going to the
hangar to see those Coast Guard kids that were flying those choppers. I
think it's something like 30,000 citizens were saved by rescue efforts by
Coast Guard men and local responders. And the people here on the front
lines of saving lives showed great courage during Katrina. (Applause.)

I remember seeing the determination of our citizens. One of the lessons
learned is when people are determined, they can get things done. At the
Pass Christian school system, for example: This is a place where they
consolidated all the schools at the elementary school. It was kind of
inconvenient, when you think about it, but the inconvenience didn't bother
the people in charge of that school system. As a matter of fact, they
viewed it as a fantastic opportunity to be able to come together and share
-- and that school was up and running, with broken windows, and -- but
there wasn't a broken heart, and their spirit wasn't broken.

One of the lessons, of course, as I mentioned, is the compassion of our
fellow citizens. Think about lonely folks being sent out, having all their
property, their material goods destroyed, wondering what the future meant
for them, and there's a loving family saying, I love you, brother; I love
you, sister. Think about a country where the compassion is so strong that a
neighbor in need can find a stranger that wants to help them get their feet
back on the ground. (Applause.)

One of the lessons of this storm is the decency of people, the decency of
men and women who care a lot about their fellow citizens, whether they be
elected officials or just folks on the ground here just trying to make
somebody else's life even better than it was before. So we learned some
lessons about how to respond, and we're going to change. But some of the
lessons shouldn't change, and that is the decency and character of the
American people.

It's been an amazing experience for you. You just got to know, though, that
a lot of people in this country, many of whom have never been down here,
care for you, they pray for you, and they're pulling for you. God bless.
(Applause.)

END 2:21 P.M. CST

===========================================================================
Return to this article at:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20060112-3.html

 * Origin: (1:3634/12)