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Monday, September 12, 2005

Bush offers ‘no-wage’ contracts for Katrina cleanup

WASHINGTON (Rooters)—President Bush issued an executive order Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage.

In a notice to Congress, Bush said the hurricane had caused “a national emergency” that permits him to take such action under the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act in ravaged areas of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi.

The Davis-Bacon law requires federal contractors to pay workers at least the prevailing wages in the area where the work is conducted. It applies to federally funded construction projects such as highways and bridges.

Bush’s executive order suspends the requirements of the Davis-Bacon law for designated areas hit by the storm.

Early Sunday evening, responding to criticism from Congressional Republicans that the executive order “did not go far enough,” President Bush issued a second order, stipulating that select federal contractors would be able to offer “no-wage” contracts in the city of New Orleans and along the Mississippi-Alabama coast.

“America has a long and proud tradition of coming together to enable certain groups of employees to work for their room and board,” Bush said today while touring the Gulf Coast.  “With these ‘no-wage’ contracts, America can get moving again.  The good news is—and it’s hard for some to see it now—that out of these ‘no-wage’ contracts Trent Lott is going to get himself a fantastic house. And I’m still looking forward to sitting on the porch.”

“Old times there are not forgotten,” replied a beaming Lott.

Conservative commentators applauded the President’s decision.  “When the Thirteenth Amendment was drafted,” said George Will, “no one anticipated the Hobbesian war of all against all that New Orleans has become.  But it is the President’s job to take bold, decisive action in a national emergency, and to determine which of our laws have become quaint or obsolete.  Once again, this President has shown that he is precisely the man for that job.”

Sunday night, Congressional Democrats sharply criticized the order, and were promptly rebuked the following morning by White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.  “The President made this decision at the end of a solemn day of mourning and remembrance,” McClellan said.  “It is a sign of just how low the Democrat party has fallen that its leaders would attack the President on the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history.”

The President’s mother, Barbara Bush, pointed out that no-wage contracts can be extremely popular for people devastated by Hurricane Katrina: “What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary,” she remarked on National Public Radio, “is that some of them are singing with happiness.  And many of them were idle anyway, so this could work out very well for them.”

President Bush did not say which industries would be eligible for the contracts, but one White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, remarked that the affected areas were ideal for growing cotton, and “cotton is a really great fabric in all kinds of weather—light, comfortable, versatile.  I think we’ll need a lot of it in the next few years, particularly in the regions most vulnerable to hurricanes.”

Tom DeLay (R- Tx.) agreed, quickly rounding up a group of evacuees for emergency planting.  With the help of law enforcement officials from Gretna, Louisiana, who surrounded the evacuees and began to march them to the fields at gunpoint, DeLay pulled aside three of them and asked, “Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?”

Posted by Michael on 09/12 at 10:27 AM
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