Coleman Warner: After Hurricane Katrina, many are saying the federal government should adopt a Marshall Plan for the Gulf States
In the spring of 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall spoke of the halting recovery -- and a new threat of political chaos -- in European nations already torn apart by World War II and disabled by an especially harsh winter. Having just participated in a gathering of foreign ministers in Moscow, Marshall was alarmed that Soviet ruler Josef Stalin seemed pleased at Western Europe's economic troubles, sensing opportunity for the spread of communism.
As University of New Orleans historian Gunter Bischof would note years later in an academic paper, Marshall chose a strong metaphor for conditions in Europe:
"While the doctors deliberate, the patient is dying."
Similar metaphors have been applied in recent months as debate rages over how much federal money to spend on recovery needs across the Gulf South in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Some historians, meanwhile, see a hopeful model in the years-long European rebuilding program that Marshall outlined in a speech at Harvard University on June 5, 1947. It forced collaboration between western European leaders and ultimately won credit for helping restore vitality to the continent's economy.
The initiative sent $13 billion in American economic and technical help to Europe -- an amount worth roughly $100 billion in inflation-adjusted 2005 dollars. That figure is considerably higher than the current aid package approved for Southern states disfigured by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The amount for the European rebuilding effort does not include aid given by private organizations, other governments or the affected countries.
"There was the willpower of the American people to do it -- and this was a country that had just been to war," said Tulane University historian Douglas Brinkley. "If we can rebuild all of the great capitals of Europe, why can't we do a sensible rebuild of New Orleans?"
The Marshall Plan and the rebuilding of western Europe offer a rhetorical symbol for local leaders who, with a $62 billion federal commitment in hand, still face skepticism in Washington about the necessity of spending far more. Federal costs associated with the terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center in 2001, California's Northridge earthquake in 1994 and Hurricane Andrew in 1992 add up to just a fraction of the total expected cost of helping Katrina's strike region.
Adjusted for inflation, the New York attacks led to more than $8 billion in federal spending, while the earthquake cost $9 billion and Andrew cost $2.5 billion, according to government estimates.
The United States has committed $250 billion so far to the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, about four times the federal commitment to the Katrina recovery in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The money appropriated for Iraq does not distinguish between military and rebuilding costs, although experts say as much as $40 billion -- and counting -- has been directed to rebuilding the country's infrastructure.
During remarks to a U.S. House of Representatives select committee Dec. 14, Gov. Kathleen Blanco alluded to the Marshall Plan: "After World War II our decision to rebuild Europe was farsighted and courageous. History will treat us well if we exhibit the same kind of political courage."
New Orleans Councilwoman Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson was less diplomatic in late October when, reacting to some members of Congress questioning the wisdom of rebuilding a city below sea level, said, "When you have a ravaged city, you rebuild it like we, Americans, helped rebuild Berlin, for God's sake. . . . We're setting new ground for America, but not for the world, and our Congress has to take note of this and treat us the same way we have treated other countries."
Federal Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Nicol Andrews isn't surprised that scholars would reach far into the past for insights. Everything about Katrina is setting records, she said, pointing to the assignment of 16,000 federal workers to the damaged coast region, 5,000 more than in 2004, when there were four major storms.
"This blows everything out, historically speaking," Andrews said.
Historians agree there is nothing close to Katrina in terms of federal aid for rebuilding after a catastrophe on American soil.
In response to the Mississippi River flooding of 1927 -- which affected 26,000 square miles in seven states, killed hundreds of people and caused wholesale destruction of buildings and crops -- the federal government, with no disaster-response agency, relied heavily upon the American Red Cross and spent no more than $32 million, or $347 million in today's dollars, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report.
An address by President Coolidge that year to Congress illustrated the government's minimalist approach to disaster response.
Coolidge said the federal government had a responsibility to rebuild damaged public works and help people in distress. But Coolidge insisted: "The government is not the insurer of its citizens against the hazards of the elements. We shall always have flood and drought, heat and cold, earthquake and wind, lightning and tidal wave, which are all too constant in their afflictions. The government does not undertake to reimburse citizens for loss and damage incurred under such circumstances."
Federal officials invested more in disaster response after passage of the Federal Disaster Act of 1950, but directed spending to restoring infrastructure rather than aid to individuals. Spending mushroomed after Hurricane Camille in 1969, experts say, when federal political figures, caught up in civil rights and anti-poverty initiatives, began extending disaster help to individuals through housing, small-business loans and education grants. Researchers say the federal response to Camille cost roughly $195 million, or more than $1 billion in today's dollars.
President Bush and some members of Congress are pushing the limits of disaster aid again by talking of a major rebuilding effort across the Gulf Coast, inviting comparisons to the Marshall Plan, said Stephen Slivinski, budget analyst for the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank that pushes for restraint in spending.
"It creates the expectation that any future disasters are going to receive the same kind of treatment, and creates a dangerous precedent," he said. "It's going to cost more not just in the short run, but in the long run as well, and it's sending the wrong signal to localities."
Bischof and Brinkley, seasoned New Orleans scholars, also are worried about sending the wrong signals -- as they make the case in favor of a Marshall Plan-scale effort.
Both men are angry about what they see as a tepid federal response to Katrina. They want bold strokes, and were barely assuaged by moves in recent weeks by the Bush administration and Congress to dedicate billions of dollars to specific levee protection or relief measures. The money is not a new appropriation, but simply a redirection of unspent money from the $62 billion Congress allocated, mostly to FEMA, weeks after Katrina struck.
Brinkley said that Bush, trying to avoid distraction from the war in Iraq, seems attuned to lessons of the Vietnam War, when President Johnson struggled to muster support for the war and an anti-poverty agenda at home. But Bush is missing the lessons of World War II, when a "we're all in this together" spirit prevailed about tough challenges, the historian said.
"A point of history is to remind us that our times are not uniquely oppressive," Brinkley said. "Great countries rebuild."
The Marshall Plan directed U.S. help to a wide range of economic recovery programs across western Europe, providing, for example, more than $24 billion to France, $22 billion to Great Britain, $10 billion to western Germany and $7 billion to Austria in today's dollars, according to Bischof.
Meanwhile, in a parallel relief program, the United States provided more than $16 billion in today's dollars to Japan, not including aid after World War II in the form of import credits and spending on American military installations.
Bischof, an Austrian native who has written about how the Marshall Plan brought economic revival to that nation, sees parallels between the postwar episode and the post-Katrina struggle. The New Orleans region has seen destruction comparable with that during war, he says. Initial requests for American aid from suffering European countries were seen as recklessly high and were reined in -- not unlike what happened to Louisiana's early pitch for more than $200 billion in federal money. And he noted that ultimate agreement in Congress on details of the Marshall Plan followed a long and stormy debate.
Bischof also said fragmented lobbying is hurting the cause of Louisiana and Mississippi, just as it did European nations that needed help in the late 1940s.
"It really hurts the Gulf Coast that every state is making its own case," Bischof said. "Come up with a regional approach to responding to this -- and I really think that region should be from Florida to Texas. Then they're going to have much more political clout; then it's not going to be an issue of whether Louisiana is more or less responsible with federal aid."
Bischof said the United States also should pursue "a Marshall Plan in reverse," inviting European nations to send resources to the storm region. ...
Read entire article at New Orleans Times-Picayune
As University of New Orleans historian Gunter Bischof would note years later in an academic paper, Marshall chose a strong metaphor for conditions in Europe:
"While the doctors deliberate, the patient is dying."
Similar metaphors have been applied in recent months as debate rages over how much federal money to spend on recovery needs across the Gulf South in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Some historians, meanwhile, see a hopeful model in the years-long European rebuilding program that Marshall outlined in a speech at Harvard University on June 5, 1947. It forced collaboration between western European leaders and ultimately won credit for helping restore vitality to the continent's economy.
The initiative sent $13 billion in American economic and technical help to Europe -- an amount worth roughly $100 billion in inflation-adjusted 2005 dollars. That figure is considerably higher than the current aid package approved for Southern states disfigured by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The amount for the European rebuilding effort does not include aid given by private organizations, other governments or the affected countries.
"There was the willpower of the American people to do it -- and this was a country that had just been to war," said Tulane University historian Douglas Brinkley. "If we can rebuild all of the great capitals of Europe, why can't we do a sensible rebuild of New Orleans?"
The Marshall Plan and the rebuilding of western Europe offer a rhetorical symbol for local leaders who, with a $62 billion federal commitment in hand, still face skepticism in Washington about the necessity of spending far more. Federal costs associated with the terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center in 2001, California's Northridge earthquake in 1994 and Hurricane Andrew in 1992 add up to just a fraction of the total expected cost of helping Katrina's strike region.
Adjusted for inflation, the New York attacks led to more than $8 billion in federal spending, while the earthquake cost $9 billion and Andrew cost $2.5 billion, according to government estimates.
The United States has committed $250 billion so far to the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, about four times the federal commitment to the Katrina recovery in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The money appropriated for Iraq does not distinguish between military and rebuilding costs, although experts say as much as $40 billion -- and counting -- has been directed to rebuilding the country's infrastructure.
During remarks to a U.S. House of Representatives select committee Dec. 14, Gov. Kathleen Blanco alluded to the Marshall Plan: "After World War II our decision to rebuild Europe was farsighted and courageous. History will treat us well if we exhibit the same kind of political courage."
New Orleans Councilwoman Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson was less diplomatic in late October when, reacting to some members of Congress questioning the wisdom of rebuilding a city below sea level, said, "When you have a ravaged city, you rebuild it like we, Americans, helped rebuild Berlin, for God's sake. . . . We're setting new ground for America, but not for the world, and our Congress has to take note of this and treat us the same way we have treated other countries."
Federal Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Nicol Andrews isn't surprised that scholars would reach far into the past for insights. Everything about Katrina is setting records, she said, pointing to the assignment of 16,000 federal workers to the damaged coast region, 5,000 more than in 2004, when there were four major storms.
"This blows everything out, historically speaking," Andrews said.
Historians agree there is nothing close to Katrina in terms of federal aid for rebuilding after a catastrophe on American soil.
In response to the Mississippi River flooding of 1927 -- which affected 26,000 square miles in seven states, killed hundreds of people and caused wholesale destruction of buildings and crops -- the federal government, with no disaster-response agency, relied heavily upon the American Red Cross and spent no more than $32 million, or $347 million in today's dollars, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report.
An address by President Coolidge that year to Congress illustrated the government's minimalist approach to disaster response.
Coolidge said the federal government had a responsibility to rebuild damaged public works and help people in distress. But Coolidge insisted: "The government is not the insurer of its citizens against the hazards of the elements. We shall always have flood and drought, heat and cold, earthquake and wind, lightning and tidal wave, which are all too constant in their afflictions. The government does not undertake to reimburse citizens for loss and damage incurred under such circumstances."
Federal officials invested more in disaster response after passage of the Federal Disaster Act of 1950, but directed spending to restoring infrastructure rather than aid to individuals. Spending mushroomed after Hurricane Camille in 1969, experts say, when federal political figures, caught up in civil rights and anti-poverty initiatives, began extending disaster help to individuals through housing, small-business loans and education grants. Researchers say the federal response to Camille cost roughly $195 million, or more than $1 billion in today's dollars.
President Bush and some members of Congress are pushing the limits of disaster aid again by talking of a major rebuilding effort across the Gulf Coast, inviting comparisons to the Marshall Plan, said Stephen Slivinski, budget analyst for the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank that pushes for restraint in spending.
"It creates the expectation that any future disasters are going to receive the same kind of treatment, and creates a dangerous precedent," he said. "It's going to cost more not just in the short run, but in the long run as well, and it's sending the wrong signal to localities."
Bischof and Brinkley, seasoned New Orleans scholars, also are worried about sending the wrong signals -- as they make the case in favor of a Marshall Plan-scale effort.
Both men are angry about what they see as a tepid federal response to Katrina. They want bold strokes, and were barely assuaged by moves in recent weeks by the Bush administration and Congress to dedicate billions of dollars to specific levee protection or relief measures. The money is not a new appropriation, but simply a redirection of unspent money from the $62 billion Congress allocated, mostly to FEMA, weeks after Katrina struck.
Brinkley said that Bush, trying to avoid distraction from the war in Iraq, seems attuned to lessons of the Vietnam War, when President Johnson struggled to muster support for the war and an anti-poverty agenda at home. But Bush is missing the lessons of World War II, when a "we're all in this together" spirit prevailed about tough challenges, the historian said.
"A point of history is to remind us that our times are not uniquely oppressive," Brinkley said. "Great countries rebuild."
The Marshall Plan directed U.S. help to a wide range of economic recovery programs across western Europe, providing, for example, more than $24 billion to France, $22 billion to Great Britain, $10 billion to western Germany and $7 billion to Austria in today's dollars, according to Bischof.
Meanwhile, in a parallel relief program, the United States provided more than $16 billion in today's dollars to Japan, not including aid after World War II in the form of import credits and spending on American military installations.
Bischof, an Austrian native who has written about how the Marshall Plan brought economic revival to that nation, sees parallels between the postwar episode and the post-Katrina struggle. The New Orleans region has seen destruction comparable with that during war, he says. Initial requests for American aid from suffering European countries were seen as recklessly high and were reined in -- not unlike what happened to Louisiana's early pitch for more than $200 billion in federal money. And he noted that ultimate agreement in Congress on details of the Marshall Plan followed a long and stormy debate.
Bischof also said fragmented lobbying is hurting the cause of Louisiana and Mississippi, just as it did European nations that needed help in the late 1940s.
"It really hurts the Gulf Coast that every state is making its own case," Bischof said. "Come up with a regional approach to responding to this -- and I really think that region should be from Florida to Texas. Then they're going to have much more political clout; then it's not going to be an issue of whether Louisiana is more or less responsible with federal aid."
Bischof said the United States also should pursue "a Marshall Plan in reverse," inviting European nations to send resources to the storm region. ...