WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), a senior member of the House Homeland Security Committee, along with the rest of the Committee’s minority membership, released a report on the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.  Rep. Markey, who has been critical of the Bush Administration’s slow response to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, released the following statement with the report:
FINAL - One Year After Katrina.pdf

"Hurricane Katrina was a tragedy for many, and it also exposed the incompetence and misguided priorities of the Bush Administration and the GOP Congress.  The waste, fraud and abuse we've seen in Louisiana and Mississippi mirrors what we have seen in Iraq.  The Bush Administration has lurched from one crisis to another without committing the sustained resources or the oversight to rebuild either New Orleans and the Gulf Coast or Iraq. 

"Americans know that the Bush Administration has fallen well short of expectations nearly a year after Hurricane Katrina hit and this report shows that they have not rebuilt enough homes, stimulated the economy, buried some of the dead, cut back on wasteful spending, or even cleaned up the mess. 

"Mark Twain once said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does tend to rhyme.  For example, the hundreds of millions in no bid contracts the bush administration gave to Halliburton in Iraq sound a lot like the hundreds of millions in no bid contracts awarded to Bechtel for Hurricane Katrina. 

"The American people are ready for a new direction in Washington because they are sick of the wrong direction we've been taken in New Orleans and in Iraq.

“This report should serve as a wake-up call to the Bush Administration and the Republican-led Congress that we still have a lot of work to do to help our fellow citizens in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf Coast region.  I am hopeful that this anniversary will be used to jumpstart that relief effort.”