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Jewish World Review Sept. 23, 2005 / 19 Elul, 5765 Fraud, waste are costs of compassion By Peter A. Brown
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Katrina's cleanup will be both outrageously expensive and so loosely managed that some people and companies will make out like bandits.
That is the price we pay for being a compassionate society. It is the unfortunate byproduct of acting humanely.
Let's be clear.
Maximum efficiency, which includes extensive financial safeguards, is incompatible with rebuilding the Gulf Coast while underwriting the daily existence of Katrina's victims.
After all, we are talking about both the biggest natural disaster — and the largest government-run rebuilding — in U.S. history.
And a government-led effort responds differently to public and political pressure than one run by the private sector, where the bottom line matters more.
The fact is that the first priority of those awarding contracts and writing checks is not limiting the government's exposure.
It is making sure those public officials and their superiors are not portrayed in the media as being mean to people already down on their luck.
Some companies will take advantage of the situation to make fat profits. And there will be countless individuals, some victims and some just playing the role, who see taking the government for as much as they can get as their birthright.
The betting is that the taxpayers will cough up the majority of the hundreds of billions of dollars that will be required.
Congress has already approved $62.5 billion. If the price tag reaches $200 billion — quite possible — that would be half the Pentagon budget.
Whether you call it fraud, or situational ethics, it would be hopelessly naive to believe that it is not going to happen.
Of course, we should condemn and prosecute those who break the law. We should seek to limit the ability of individuals to take advantage of a tragedy to line their own pockets.
But no matter what the government says and does — Congress and President Bush both have increased the oversight budget to go along with the spending and talked about toughening laws to prevent abuse — it is going to happen.
There isn't much that we can do, if you think about it.
There will be too much cash sloshing around and too much pressure to get things done yesterday to allow for the kind of disciplined response that would be the case if fiscal propriety was the guiding imperative.
But that is not the case.
We don't want to admit it, because that accepts the idea of taxpayers being ripped off.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans, whose homes have been damaged or destroyed so that reoccupying them is more dream than reality, have no place to go.
They need to be fed, clothed and housed.
Businesses will do everything possible to snare the billions of dollars in contracts that government will hand out to quell the public outcry. Inevitably, palms will be greased and costs exaggerated.
But you can be sure, too, that many of those getting government money to rebuild their lives will be helping themselves to as much as they can get, seeing disaster relief as an entitlement.
It's human nature.
Remember how in South Florida, which mostly avoided last year's hurricanes, people got the government to pay for furniture and funerals that even a cursory review found not related to storm damage.
The lack of rigid fiscal controls is the price we will pay in a society in which instant public gratification has become the requirement to avoid the rather unpleasant experience for public officials of being excoriated on cable television.
Government will do everything it can to stop the rip-offs, but anyone who believes they'll be mostly effective probably still expects the tooth fairy to leave money under the pillow.
You'll hear politicians (mostly Democrats) rail about how the contracts to rebuild New Orleans and its environs are allotted. Already, there is muttering about no-bid contracts.
But the bidding process takes time, and there aren't a lot of people who want the cleanup to wait until the forms are all filled out in triplicate.
Other politicians (mostly Republicans) will bemoan the lack of controls over the billions of dollars that will be given out without proper controls to the evacuees and others displaced by the storm.
You had only to listen to talk radio about the feds handing out $2,000 debit cards to anyone in line at the right place to hear the public skepticism.
But everyone understands the impracticality of fiscal discipline in a time of tragedy.
In the end, both parties will make sure their constituents are taken care of. Business will get the contracts, and the masses will get their checks.
The taxpayers will get taken.
That's the price we pay for living in a compassionate society.
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Peter A. Brown is an editorial page columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. Comment by clicking here. © 2005, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services |
Mitch Albom | |||||||||||
