“Why is it four years after Katrina we’re still fighting for money to repair our devastated city?” asked Gabriel Bordenave, 29, a Loyola law school graduate. “I expected as much from the Bush administration. But why are we still being nickeled and dimed?”
The president, in a rare moment on the defensive in a format that is usually friendly to him, said many people in New Orleans were “understandably impatient” and said he had inherited a backlog of problems.
“These things were not all going to be fixed tomorrow,” Mr. Obama said. “So we are working as hard as we can, as quickly as we can.” He added, “I wish I could just write a check.”
When someone shouted, “Why not?” Mr. Obama replied, “There’s this whole thing about the Constitution.”
He added that “we’ve got to go through procedures” in assessing, for instance, how much to reimburse for the damage done to Charity Hospital in New Orleans. But he said his administration had freed up $1.4 billion in aid and told the young man, “That may not sound like a lot of money to you, but it’s real money.”
Now, that's just lame. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not suggesting that President OBama doesn't care about the people of New Orleans, but after four years of delay, and nine months into his Administration, after billions of bailout dollars to AIG, are you telling me that the same Congress that passed Cash for Clunkers can't cut a check, if you leaned on them? And why say it like that? Oh, and then leave after a couple of hours, and jet to a 30 grand a plate fundraiser, in San Francisco!? WTF?
I'm probably overreacting, but I just think, when Obama won the Nobel Prize, and said it was to be a "call to action?" That means less of this, and more of actually getting things done. Remember. You are the President. You are the President.
cross posted from Stubborn Facts.
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