Not More Spending, Better Spending

(cross-posted on tpmcafe.com)

This article from the Washington Post this morning makes an important point: Underfunding the Army Corps of Engineers was not the problem that caused flooding in New Orleans. The problem was that the Army Corps of Engineers spends money on the wrong things, pushed by members of Congress and its own inclinations.

"Liberal bloggers, Democratic politicians and some GOP defenders of the Corps have linked the catastrophe to the underfunding of the agency," the Post notes.

But the article points out that the Army Corps was already in the middle of a $748 million construction project right on the Industrial Canal where the most devastating breach occurred. Unfortunately, the project involved building a new lock on the canal, which had nothing to do with flood control and was justified by a prediction that barge traffic would increase, which has not occurred.

According to this study from the bipartisan group Taxpayers for Common Sense, which is the best source for info on waste in the Army Corps and in big projects, the lock-replacement, the most expensive in U.S. history, would (or would have) caused horrible environmental damage to the same low-income neighborhoods that have been washed out by the storm. The report also notes that the major beneficiary of the new lock would be Bollinger Shipyards, Inc., "the only shipyard on the north side of the lock."

Incidentally, a quick search for Bollinger Shipyards on the Center for Responsive Politics site reveals that the company and the family that runs it are quite apolitical and seem to focus on their business.

Just kidding! -- the company and seven members of the Bollinger family have given $562,000 to candidates and political committees since 1998, 99% of it to local and out-of-state Republicans. The Bollingers were the fifth biggest contributor to Sen. David Vitter, identified in the Taxpayers for Common Sense report as a major advocate for the lock project.

But campaign graft is not the only thing going on here. The other part of the story is simply that the Army Corps likes to build big things. If you've ever read Cadillac Desert, by Marc Reisner, which I think is one of the five or ten best books ever written about American politics, you'll be familiar with the tales of the Army Corps and the Bureau of Reclamation and their obsession with building big dams wherever they could. The book mostly deals with places where water is scarce, so it's not directly applicable to New Orleans, but my guess is that the same dynamic applies. Building up the levees and flood walls are mundane, long projects with no immediate payoff to anyone. Building a new lock, or a new dam, is what real men do.

According to the Post, Bush has increased appropriations for Louisiana Army Corps projects somewhat over the Clinton years, which isn't surprising. But much of this is a dynamic that goes on year after year, and the last President who really tried to break the power of the Army Corps, the Bureau of Reclamation, and their congressional backers was Jimmy Carter, one of his biggest mistakes.

It's very important that the liberal message here is not just "spend more money." Whether the issue is the Department of Homeland Security or the Army Corps, the point should be to spend the money have smartly, efficiently, in the public interest, and with the kind of cost-benefit analysis that puts the right value on disaster-prevention.