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Second Oldest Community in New Orleans Reopens; Paying for Recovery Costs From Hurricane Katrina

Aired September 19, 2005 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: Just a few moments ago, we showed you the ribbon-cutting ceremony in Algiers, the second oldest community in New Orleans. There it is, the city councilwoman, Jackie Clarkson there, cutting that ribbon, which is welcoming residents back into that neighborhood. It is officially open today, so let's take you there to speak with Jackie Clarkson in person.
Of course, this was just a symbolic thing, this ribbon cutting, but it also stands for the beginning of a city to rebuild. You've got to be excited about this.

JACKIE CLARKSON, NEW ORLEANS CITY COUNCIL: I'm ecstatic. It does symbolize re-opening and starting the rebirth of the greatest city in America, and it's especially exciting to me as the councilwoman, although this is only half of my district, because I have the French Quarter and some east bank historic neighborhoods also.

It's very important to me because this is where I live and where I'm generational in this community, so -- and I've seen this community lead before, and we'll watch them lead again. It's just fabulous. We're so excited.

NGUYEN: Have residents heard the call to come back home? are they coming in by the hundreds?

CLARKSON: Oh, absolutely. They are, and they're chomping at the bit to be here. And we have everything. You know, we have potable water, sewer, electricity. We have a drugstore open. We have gas stations. We have medical clinics. We have a house in the next parish only a few miles away. We have a full-functioning, huge hospital, which most of our residents use anyway, and we have food- distribution points. We have other smaller points with just ice, and water and MREs. We have garbage collection. We've had garbage collection for two weeks now. And we have debris cleaning -- cleanup, and it's all -- we're back ready to go, and there's some inconveniences. They'll have to go to the next two parishes for groceries, but that's only a few miles, and we all shop in each other's parishes anyway.

NGUYEN: You know, that was quite a list of things that are back up and running. Besides the grocery stores, what else is lacking in that neighborhood?

CLARKSON: Well, you know, depending on what people -- like a hardware store, that's what I need, a grocery store, and then more gas stations, so the lines won't be frustrating. And, of course, we need -- I think we need to continue to get the word out to everyone that they need to get shots, even though we have no flooding, and we don't have any environmental threats or public health contamination, and so we need points of information, and we're trying very hard to get the word out to everybody. We need schools to open, and the school board is working on trying to open the Algiers schools first, this fall, because until you give people places for their children to go to school, they can't come home.

NGUYEN: Right, and also gets children back in school, learning and their mind off of all that they've been through.

CLARKSON: Most of them are enrolled in the cities they're but, we don't want them cities to keep them; we want them home.

NGUYEN: You want them back in your hometown.

CLARKSON: That's right, back where they belong.

NGUYEN: Back where they belong.

CLARKSON: In good old New Orleans.

NGUYEN: We understand that. And it's great to see the city being open again and people coming back home. Thanks for your time.

CLARKSON: It's wonderful. Thank you very much.

NGUYEN: You're welcome.

We want to talk now about cutting the fat to fund rebuilding. That is fast becoming the mantra of some prominent Republicans, about paying for recovery costs from Hurricane Katrina. Now, Democrats are calling for a rollback of recent tax cuts for the wealthy. No matter where the money comes from for rebuilding the Gulf region, most experts do agree it will require some difficult choices.

I want to talk about funding recovery efforts now with former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr. As always, we appreciate you being on the show. We are talking billions of dollars, some $200 billion is what the initial estimate is. Where will that money come from and what cuts are we going to see?

BOB BARR, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: This is a difficult question, because not only do you have to look at where the money is going do come from, but how it's going to get there, how quickly it's going to get there. In some cases in the past where we've had a large and very quick infusion of federal monies into an area, it's gone beyond the ability of the local government or the agencies to use it, and that's when you see huge amounts of waste and corruption, so we want to make sure that isn't done. But Congress is going to have to either tighten its belt or go into some serious deficit spending.

NGUYEN: Which brings up the question, though, is there enough fat in the budget to cut? BARR: I think there is, especially if Congress takes a hard look at this and paces itself. If they simply want to write out a hundred billion dollar check, then they're going to have real problems. If, in fact, they say, OK, what is needed need right now, and then a month later, what is now needed and they parcel it out, consistent with the ability of the governments down there and the agencies to absorb it, yes, I think they can make correspondent cuts. One place they might start, of course, was that massive transportation bill that was passed just a few weeks ago with about $250 billion, with an awful lot of pork in it.

NGUYEN: Now The president wants to keep his tax cuts in place, but he doesn't want to tax Americans for the Katrina relief project, so how does that play into it? Is that possible?

BARR: I think it's possible, but again, it's going to have to take some very serious discipline on the part of the Congress and the White House, both of which have shown themselves not to be terribly fiscally conservative over the last several years. So their track record is not good on this, and I think what's going to happen is you're going to see unfortunately a lot of deficit spending, which simply then puts off the payback for all of that money, and probably will lead to some increases in inflation.

NGUYEN: There is also the question of how can President Bush go forward with his agenda? You have the war in Iraq. Now you've got Katrina and the aftermath. Do you have to take from one to give to the other?

BARR: Well, that's a very difficult Hobson's Choice, so to speak, and I don't think that the president is of a mind to start cutting back in Iraq. Of course, you know, all of the oil money that we're promised that we had anticipated is not there either, so that's slowed down, the payback for that.

It's going to be difficult for him to juggle all this, in other words, to continue paying the billions of dollars every month for Iraq, continue the tax cuts, continue all of the highway spending and the Medicare spending. They passed that huge increase in Medicaid Funding for prescription drugs just last year, and now Katrina. I think they're in for a real train wreck from a spending standpoint.

NGUYEN: Let's shift gears for just a minute, because President Bush has asked former President Clinton to help raise pope for hurricane victims, but President Clinton has also been very critical of the Bush administration's response to Katrina, and I want to show you a quote from what he recently said. He says, you can't have an emergency plan that works if it only affects middle-class people and up. What's your reaction to that?

BARR: That's a low blow. It's entirely inaccurate. I don't think there's anybody that can really look at the disaster that was precipitated by Katrina here and the ensuing disaster with the flood and come away with the point legitimately that the administration is only trying to help a certain class of people. The burden here fell on the lower-income folks certainly to a large extent in new Orleans, But that was simply the facts of the case down there, where a lot of folks couldn't leave and were directed to go somewhere, but that was not a decision by the Bush administration.

NGUYEN: Well, let me ask you this, because in response to that, Clinton also talked about what you could say may be a bigger problem here, and I quote him, saying "Whether it's race based or not, if you give your tax cuts to the rich and hope everything works out all right, and poverty goes up and it disproportionately affects black and brown people, that's a consequence of the action made." So is he speaking to a bigger problem than just the evacuation itself.

BARR: What he's doing is he's rehashing and raising once again this canard that tax cuts are somehow class based or race based. The tax cuts that the Bush administration is pushing for affect a very broad range of people. They affect a lot of small business owners, those that are directly affected and impacted by the Katrina Disaster, they affect an awful lot of small investors. This notion that somehow the tax cuts help just the wealthy has been blown apart time and time again, and it's really unfortunate that Mr. Clinton has interjected that into this very important discussion about how to solve a disaster here.

NGUYEN: Former Georgia Congressman, we appreciate your time as always. Bob Barr, thank you.

BARR: Sure.

NGUYEN: Securing New Orleans, it is the FBI's main mission. Hear what they are doing firsthand. That's coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: LIVE FROM continues now live in New Orleans, Louisiana. And as we've been talking about businesses getting up and running and a number of people coming back into parts of this city -- mostly Algiers is what we've been talking about -- of course, security is still a tremendous concern, with law enforcement and other authorities that are here in the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas.

And we were coming back to our hotel a couple of nights ago. It was about 1:00 in the morning. We started finishing -- well, we were finishing up editing a story for the next day. And as we were coming into the parking lot, we noticed all these SUVs and FBI SWAT teams in full tactical gear. So, of course, that got us asking the question, what is the FBI doing? What are the SWAT teams doing? And how effective are the operations going?

I want to bring in Lon Boudreaux, a SWAT coordinator and supervisor, of course, special agents here in New Orleans. Appreciate you being with us here today, Lon.

So we did -- we saw these tactical teams in full gear, and we were wondering how safe is it, you know, for people right now to come back? There's a lot of issues at hand. Tell me the primary goal of why you brought so many SWAT teams into New Orleans? LON BOUDREAUX, NEW ORLEANS FBI: The SWAT teams were brought in by the special agent in charge of the FBI in New Orleans as requested, Director Mueller (ph), to enhance the NOPD's tactical contingency. And they were able to basically come in and support NOPD. The federal agencies -- all law enforcement federal agencies got together, and the districts were supported and right now the FBI SWAT teams are in the second and sixth district of New Orleans.

PHILLIPS: Well, let's talk about what your guys are dealing with right now. I was telling you that I was talking to friends of mine within the NOPD -- NOPD -- and they were telling me that the 82nd Airborne was going out on SWAT call-outs with them. You were telling me, also, that these SWAT team members are helping the NOPD on possibly high-threat calls that might come in. What kind of calls have they been out on? What are the major concerns? Weapons, stolen cars? Tell me what it is.

BOUDREAUX: The types of calls that have been handled were basically going into the areas that intelligence from the NOPD supported that there were maybe problems in. And a lot of house-to- house clearing was conducted, in particular in the Sixth District and the Second District for the FBI. And basically supporting the NOPD in any way. I mean, some of the cases that have been made were, like, stolen properties cases, stolen weapons recovered. Also stolen vehicles and other types of technology, like we talked about. Electronic equipment and such.

PHILLIPS: Have there been any issues with individuals basically being holed up in their homes? I know that about a week ago, 82nd Airborne guys were telling me they had to help the NOPD because there were guys that were in these homes with guns and other things that had been looted and they, of course, didn't want to leave behind what they had.

BOUDREAUX: Right. I'm not aware of any in particular at the SWAT team for the FBI handled. But, again, like we discussed earlier, this is something that's, you know, a SWAT teams handles, so it's not that unusual. There's a standard operating procedure for doing these -- the storm has not affected that standard operating procedure. So if someone held up, that is what, you know, SWAT teams do, and that's why the SWAT teams are here.

PHILLIPS: They're going to go.

BOUDREAUX: To support NOPD just for that reason.

PHILLIPS: Let's talk about all the classified information, too. The FBI has a lot of classified documents in New Orleans. These guys are protecting your building. They're protecting cases that you still want to see through, right?

BOUDREAUX: Yes, ma'am. The FBI office was never, ever abandoned at all. The SAC himself was actually in the office for the storm. The office was with the contingency of agents and NOPD task force officers, rode the storm out in the building. Now, as you know, we're still there. And, you know, we cannot leave that building, whether it has power or not. We have to stay with the building because of the evidence and because of the classified information that's in it.

PHILLIPS: Lon Boudreaux, FBI. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time today. And also, Lon was telling me that while the guys, of course, are working the law enforcement issues, when they're not doing that, when they're off the clock working security, they're helping each other rebuild their homes.

The local agents here and, of course, the other guys that have come in from other states, they're pitching in and getting homes up and operating. So, indeed, while they're out to work, they'll also have a home to come back to. So it's a bit of a dual mission. A lot of the agents coming together and helping each other and unifying in ways that we haven't seen before.

We're going to take a quick break. More LIVE FROM right after this.

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PHILLIPS: Live back in New Orleans, Louisiana, LIVE FROM rolls on.

I have to tell you, in the midst of everything going on with regard to security and rebuilding this city and the efforts taking place to get the New Orleanians to come back in, there's one thing that a lot of people are talking about in addition to homes and business, and that is the New Orleans Saints. We remember the Superdome here, and it became a place for people to live when the hurricane came through. It also became a place that turned into quite a disaster, and it's been very hard for people to talk about what it was like to be inside there, and just to see the Superdome turn into what it's turned into now, and the Saints didn't know if they'd be playing football, didn't know what was going to happen to the team.

Well, some great news for fans here and all across the region is that they are going to be playing today, and they're going to be playing against the Giants, and that's where we find Waveland, Mississippi Mayor Tommy Longo. He is there on the field, as a matter of fact. A lot going on.

Mayor, can you hear me OK? Sort of set the scene for us there on the field.

MYR. TOMMY LONGO, WAVELAND, MISSISSIPPI: Yes, Kyra, I can hear you fine, and I'm on the field in New York at Giants Stadium, and there's a lot of excitement. The NFL and the commissioner have been great, getting evacuees to the game, and tonight the Saints are playing here. This will be the first Saints game that we've been able to see. We haven't had TV or communications, and we're excited about being able to see the game tonight.

PHILLIPS: Well, I know you've got a lot of fans in Waveland, Mississippi that love the Saints, in addition, of course, to folks here in New Orleans, but let's talk about this NFL benefit, mayor, and what the players are doing, and just give us more specifics about it.

Can you hear me all right, mayor?

LONGO: Yes, ma'am. I didn't hear the question.

PHILLIPS: OK. That's OK. Tell me about the NFL benefit.

LONGO: The NFL is -- and the commissioner, as I said, and -- have been great in the relief, hurricane relief fund and trying to raise funds for the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and catastrophe is what it is, and it's going to be years of rebuilding on the Gulf Coast, and Mississippi, and Louisiana and Alabama, and the NFL stepped up to the plate. They've also been great, in addition to raising funds for the Gulf Coast and surrounding area, in taking care of the evacuees and getting them to football games, and trying to add a happy moment amidst all of the troubling times that they've been going through.

PHILLIPS: Well, is it true that a lot of these NFL football players have been getting on the phones, members of the Saints and the Giants, to raise money and help these victims? Is that right?

LONGO: Positively, yes, ma'am. Steve McNair, and Brett Favre and Steven Peterman, there's NFL players all over the country that are raising money. They're actually coming in, helping unload trucks, and they've actually gotten down in the dirt with the rest of us and been a part of it. It's really moving to see what they've done, and their foundations and taking care of our people and actually getting life- sustaining sustenance to the area, and we're very appreciative.

PHILLIPS: Well, mayor, I'm curious, before we let you go, do you think there will be more people rooting for the Saints than the Giants, or do I dare ask?

LONGO: Well, of course, we're pulling for the NFL. We're very appreciative, but there's a big part of our heart for the New Orleans Saints, obviously.

PHILLIPS: Obviously. A lot of us here rooting for them, too.

Mayor Tommy Longo, mayor of Waveland, Mississippi, so great to talk to you, sir. Thank you so much. Enjoy your time there in New York.

Of course, a lot of people back here in New Orleans are going to be watching that football game. It's a flavor of New Orleans that's keeping them going, as you know, during this tough time here in New Orleans and throughout the region.

Second hour of LIVE FROM starts right after a quick break.

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