INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

C-SPAN’S “NEWSMAKERS”

Guest: Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA)

Reporters: Bruce Alpert, New Orleans Times-Picayune and

Gerry Shields, Baton Rouge Advocate

Moderator: C-SPAN

TAPE DATE: Thursday, August 23, 2007

AIR DATE/TIME: SUNDAY, August 26, 2007 at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. ET

Please use with attribution to C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers”….*

* NOTE: C-SPAN should appear in all-caps because it is an acronym for Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network

Please contact Jennifer Moire in C-SPAN's Media Relations Department at

202-626-8797 or jmoire@c-span.org for questions

© NCSC

Copyrighted material: use with attribution only

ROBB HARLESTON, HOST: In this edition of Newsmakers, our guest is Senator Mary Landrieu. She is a Democrat from Louisiana, and chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery.

She’s here to talk to us about the state of New Orleans and Louisiana two years after Katrina, as well as federal money for the recovery, housing concerns and her bid for re-election.

Joining us for the conversation this morning is Bruce Alpert of the “New Orleans Times-Picayune,” and Gerry Shields of the “Baton Rouge Advocate.”

Ma’am, according to a recent article in the “New York Times,” after two years and nearly $100 billion spent by the Army Corps of Engineers, the risk of post-Katrina flooding has only been reduced by about six inches in some of the poorer areas of New Orleans. But the flood risk has been reduced by about six feet in some of the wealthier parts of town.

Can you explain that?

U.S. SEN. MARY LANDRIEU (D-LA), CHAIR, HOMELAND SECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE ON DISASTER RECOVERY: Well, Robb, it’s really a distorted view of what the nation has thought since Katrina and Rita, that only the poor areas flooded. Rich areas flooded, poor areas flooded, middle income areas flooded. And as we correct the situation, we’re correcting it for everyone.

The other fallacy is that poor people lived in low-lying areas and rich people lived in high areas. That is not true, either.

What is true is that, the Corps of Engineers has engineered so many mistakes over the last 50 years – (INAUDBILE) running channels throughout south Louisiana for navigation, that not only helps us, but helps the whole nation – that the whole system needs to be revived and strengthened. And that is what’s happening.

Now, I can’t vouch for everything the Corps does and how they spend every penny. But I can tell you that south Louisiana and the Gulf Coast is worth saving. And we’re saving all parts of it – rich and poor, black and white – as fast as we can get it done.

HARLESTON: We’ll continue the conversation with Senator Mary Landrieu with Bruce Alpert of the “New Orleans Times-Picayune.”

BRUCE ALPERT, STAFF WRITER, “NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE”: Good morning, senator.

In case you haven’t noticed …

LANDRIEU: Good morning, Bruce.

ALPERT: In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a presidential race going on. And I wonder if you think the presidential candidates are paying enough attention to the Gulf Coast’s recovery needs.

LANDRIEU: Well, I can tell you at least three of them are. Senator Clinton, Senator Edwards and Governor Huckabee are going to be here in New Orleans for the second anniversary of Katrina.

And I’m very pleased that they have accepted my invitation to come and to speak about their views about catastrophic recovery and how the country could be better positioned, how states and regions and cities could be better positioned to handle a catastrophic recovery, whether it’s Memphis that’s destroyed because of an earthquake, or Seattle because a tsunami hits Seattle, or Long Island, just like what happened in 1938 when a category five slammed into Long Island.

And as you know, Bruce, when it happened to us, there just weren’t enough tool boxes or tools on the shelf, and we had to kind of make them up as we were going along, which is not ideal – in the middle of a crisis.

And so, that effort is still going on – not only how to recover here at home, but how we could do it better, when and if this happens to another city or region in the future.

So, I know at least three of them are paying attention. And I do believe that others have talked about it and mentioned it in speeches.

But this is going to be a very important item for the next president of the United States, to assure Americans that they are aware that the country is not ready for a catastrophic disaster on the homeland. And what would they do as president to get it more ready?

GERARD SHIELDS, WASHINGTON BUREAU CORRESPONDENT, “BATON ROUGE ADVOCATE”: Senator, how do you think the Bush administration has handled the recovery?

LANDRIEU: I think very spotty. Some things have been good, and some things haven’t. Yesterday’s announcement was one of the good things.

Don Powell, the coordinator, who speaks for the president, announced that the president intends to ask Congress for an additional $7 billion to complete the fixing – not complete, but continue – the fixing of our levees and internal pumping systems down here in southeast Louisiana. That is very good.

But I think other issues about school recovery, health care recovery, the inadequate and distribution of funding, whether it’s in fisheries or health care or housing or education, where more money went to other states. And it doesn’t seem like the formula was based on need but politics is not good. And I’d like to avoid that in the future and fix it for the present.

ALPERT: Do you think your colleagues on Capitol Hill are aware of some of these shortcomings and the needs that continue, if the region is going to fully recover?

LANDRIEU: Bruce, I think some of them are. I’m very pleased with the fact that, I think over 60 or 65 senators have come down to Louisiana – Democrats and Republicans. We have had a good number of House members.

It’s disappointing that not every member of Congress has come down. I would hope that that would be the case. This is something that everyone should see.

I mean, again, it is a major, catastrophic disaster. As I’ve tried to explain to the country in Hurricane Andrew, which was the worst storm to hit in 1992, Florida, we lost 18,000 homes and homesteads.

We lost 205,000 homes in Louisiana alone, 61,000 in Mississippi, 20,000 businesses, most churches, many, many schools – in a weekend. It’s just – it’s hard for people to really understand how extensive this destruction was and why it is so difficult.

We’re not a rich state, like Connecticut and New York. So you’ve got your two poorest states in the union – Mississippi and Louisiana – trying to pull themselves up by their bootstrap.

And I’d like to respond, if I could, for initially this $110 billion. Please don’t mistake that $110 billion figure as money that’s come down here for recovery.

According to the GAO report, most of that money went to temporary emergency responses, you know, early on. Very little of that money – much less than 20 percent or 25 percent, according to GAO – has gone to long-term recovery.

So, we really can’t be charged with that $110 billion number in terms of improving our recovery. Most of it was for immediate aid, kind of emergency aid, housing, temporary vouchers, that kind of thing.

We still have a long way to go in this recovery.

ALPERT: What still needs to be done, senator? And what are you asking your colleagues to approve on Capitol Hill?

LANDRIEU: Well, the first step is the levees, of course – levees and flood control. We did get a major bill passed, Bruce, as you know, after 40 years of our delegation asking, and then a hard push the last 10 years, to get a revenue sharing stream for Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, which will give us a percentage of the oil and gas revenues that we generate off of our coast for the benefit of the nation.

We’re now going to be able to redirect a portion of those revenues back to coastal protection on the Gulf Coast, America’s only energy coast. That’s huge.

Getting the Corps of Engineers to reform itself, streamline itself, and continue to build levees and flood control structures that actually protect us and not destroy us, is the second point.

We have to have a much more aggressive way to distribute housing aid to people. We have gone through this sort of awkward Community Development Block Grant program that’s not really worked as well as we had hoped, but there was nothing else. We had to do something.

And getting FEMA to stop saying that they want us to build higher and better and stronger. But technically and actually that’s illegal, according to the Stafford Act.

The Stafford Act right now will only reimburse you for what you had before. So, if you had an old car with a radiator with a hole in it, that’s all you get from FEMA. You can’t buy a new car that actually has better gas mileage, et cetera. You have to buy the old one with the hole in the radiator.

If you had an old fire truck, they don’t give you a new one. You’ve got to go find an old one to buy. It’s ridiculous.

So, I’ve got to change those laws. It’s going to take awhile, but we’ve got to have a better legal framework from the federal government how to make the Stafford Act work for catastrophic disasters.

SHIELDS: Senator, I toured New Orleans and some of is ruined neighborhoods last week and saw some signs of recovery. There are houses being built on blocks that were once vacant.

But there are critics who say the recovery is taking too long. What’s your thoughts?

LANDRIEU: Gerry, it’s going to be a long time, not just for New Orleans.

I was down at Plaquemines Parish and South Plaquemines. It’s going to be a long time before Buras and Empire and some of the small towns come back.

We even have some difficulties along the southwestern part of our state. In East Texas they’re still struggling. And along the Gulf Coast there’s still a lot of communities.

It took us 25 years to fully recover from Camille, which, as you remember, was a huge storm that hit the Gulf Coast. So, this is a 10- or 20-year recovery effort.

But the exciting thing, there are some very positive things that are happening. One, as you know, the most extensive community planning has been done in south Louisiana, unprecedented in the nation’s history.

We have some extraordinary planners from all over the world that have come in and said, “OK, this is destroyed. Let’s be smarter the next time. Let’s build it better, higher, differently.” Some new urbanism, building green, stronger building codes, et cetera – it’s very exciting.

And what we need is just to continue a combination of tax credits and private sector investment, as well as good, strong government guidelines and paradigms, to help everyone get back in.

And we’re hoping that HUD will continue to work with us, to get not only homeowners back, but renters and subsidized housing, because in a community, of course, you need all sorts of people to come back and rebuild. And our workforce housing issues are critical.

ALPERT: Senator, as you know, the schools in New Orleans have been terrible for years. And some people see the hurricane as an opportunity to rebuild them and make them more effective.

You’ve been quite active in encouraging education reform in the city. Where are we now? And what else do we need to do?

LANDRIEU: Well, Bruce, I think this is going to be one of the truly outstanding and wonderful bright spots that come out of this catastrophe. Our school system had failed before Katrina and Rita the children of this city.

And as you know, the state had arranged to basically take over the schools by creating a recovery district, which many states are now considering, because of the rules requiring that by the federal government.

We were kind of in advance of the federal laws and accountability and had our own system, so that recovery district had been created. And then right as it was going into place, Katrina hit that summer and threw the schools into a more accelerated, if you will, redesign plan.

But again we’re being thwarted by the FEMA rules that basically say, you have to repair a school building before we can give you your money to fix it.

And what I’ve done is put a new law in place that says FEMA is going to cut one check to the City of New Orleans, or Jefferson of Plaquemines or the other parishes, for what FEMA owes us for the destruction of our schools – no more and no less than we are entitled to. And then let the recovery district decide what buildings we want to rebuild.

Maybe some of them must be repaired. Some of them have to be torn down. And use that as a way to help revitalize our school system.

And it’s not just the buildings. As you know, we’ve hired probably the best superintendent in the country, Paul Vallas, that’s come from Chicago and then Philadelphia, to come and help stand up the school system – much more independent, much more sort of charter-like, not centralized, not bureaucratic, decentralized, and really giving more choices to parents and children.

And I think, finally, on this point, Bruce, that schools are the heart of neighborhoods. And we want to get back to neighborhoods where you can walk, where you can have children walking to school safely, neighborhood oriented and very committed to the rebirth of those neighborhoods in the city.

And that’s what we’re doing, and it’s really one of the exciting things happening outside of the recovery.

HARLESTON: In this edition of Newsmakers, we’re talking about the state of New Orleans and Louisiana two years after Katrina with Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.

And our reporters this week are Bruce Alpert of the “New Orleans Time Picayune,” and Gerry Shields of the “Baton Rouge Advocate.”

We’ll continue questioning with Gerry Shields.

SHIELDS: Senator, I met with Governor Kathleen Blanco last week. And she intends to come up to Washington next month to seek $4 billion for the Road Home housing recovery program in the state.

How realistic do you think it is for us to get that money in the war supplemental that’ll be brought to Capitol Hill next week?

LANDRIEU: Well, Gerry, it’s essential that we get our fair share of funding. As you know, Louisiana was extremely shortchanged in the distribution of the Community Development Block Grant funding.

It’s really a no-brainer when you look at the fact that Mississippi got $5.5 billion. We got $10.6, which sounds good, except that we had three to seven times more damage, and yet, we only got twice as much money.

I know it’s very difficult for the population around the country to understand, but I do believe that people fundamentally know that aid money after a disaster should be based on actual damage, not political influence, or not any other kind of formula.

If you had X number of houses destroyed, or X number of businesses, the money should flow accordingly. And it didn’t happen that way.

And so, we are most certainly going to come back and ask for our share of the Community Development Block Grant funding. And how that’s allocated, how much is used for Road Home and how much is used for infrastructure is really up to the state.

I will say that I am personally, as you know, disappointed in some aspects of the Road Home program. I think it was unnecessarily complicated. It’s been slow. There’s been a lot of money spent on contractor that could have done a much better job.

We did not design that program at the federal level. So, the governor hopefully will also say what she’s doing to help streamline the program to make it better, to make it more effective, and then will make those arguments to Washington.

ALPERT: Will the efforts to get funding for the Road Home program and other needs in the state, do you think, be hurt by our recent rash of corruption, both financial and personal?

I don’t need to tell you that we have a congressman from New Orleans who has been indicted, a councilman from New Orleans who pled guilty to taking a payment. We have the head of the state film council who is charged with taking payments to give out lucrative tax credits. And your own colleague has admitted that his phone number appeared on the D.C. madam’s list.

Is this going to make your colleagues, do you think, more skeptical about providing more assistance?

LANDRIEU: Well, Bruce, it most certainly doesn’t help. And I would be not forthcoming if I said anything else. It does not help.

But I am asking Congress and the executive branch to look beyond those individual mistakes, as severe as some of them are, and look to the needs of people who are still really suffering and need help and attention, and through in some ways no fault of their own, living behind levees that should have held and didn’t, and collapsed, ended up losing everything that they and their parents and grandparents had worked for, literally for generations.

I mean, it’s inconceivable that one day you could wake up and everything you owned, your church that you helped to build, your school that you helped to build, your home that you lived in, your business that you built, was gone through no fault of your own. You didn’t live in a floodplain, you had insurance, and the levees didn’t hold.

So, I think that Congress is starting to understand this just wasn’t a hurricane, this was a flood – basically manmade – and will have, if you will, sympathy and support, despite the problems and continue to say, we do need to get appropriate help down to the Gulf Coast.

SHIELDS: Senator, you are the chair of the new Disaster Recovery Subcommittee in the Senate. And I wanted to ask you what you think are the issues you’ll be tackling in the coming months?

LANDRIEU: Well, there’s so many, Gerry. One is the inequity and distribution of funding, which we have tried to hone in on and I think have done a pretty good job of outlining. While we do not begrudge Mississippi, Texas or Alabama any funding that they’ve gotten, we do think those Community Development Block Grant funds should be distributed based on damage and need.

We’re also going to be focused on fixing FEMA. I think the country really wants FEMA fixed. It just does not work for catastrophic disasters. It does work for your garden-variety tornado. It does work for your sort of moderate hurricane damage, where a small community or a small area in a larger area is hit, but the larger area is intact, that can help rebuild.

But when a whole city, or 80 percent of a city, or 80 percent or more of several counties, like what happened to us and along the Gulf Coast are destroyed, it takes more than just the regular Stafford Act. So, that’s what we’re going to be crafting.

In addition, it’s unclear right now in the law who’s responsible for long-term rebuilding. Is it HUD? Is it Transportation?

Is there some sort of more coordinated federal effort that could be put together for helping to manage a long-term recovery, which in this instance will be 10 to 15 years? That’s unclear. So, those are some of the things that we’re looking at.

We’ve got to get away – the third thing is, the only answer FEMA can give you is a trailer that’s eight by 16, that would blow away in the next hurricane if it hit.

Thank goodness this hurricane that went south didn’t hit us again, because we would have had a lot of trailers flying around in 150-mile-an-hour winds and a lot of people displaced.

So, FEMA needs to do more than trailers, for one. And there are many other things that we need to fix.

ALPERT: Senator, as you well know, you’re up for re-election next year. And Republicans would assess your situation as this, that a lot of Democratic voters – a lot more Democratic voters – have left the state than Republican voters.

Does this worry you?

LANDRIEU: Well, first of all, that’s never really been documented. What has been documented is some people have left the state. Some Democrats have left, some Republicans have left, and some people have come back. New people are coming back.

As you know, the population shift in south Louisiana has been quite dramatic. There are now 700,000 people that are living between – on the I-12 corridor between Saint Tammany Parish and Livingston and Ascension Parish – more than in Orleans and Jefferson combined.

Baton Rouge is now a larger city than New Orleans. So, people have shifted around. But much of that shifting, Bruce, has been done inside of the state.

And I also believe that my record is substantial enough that people in all parts of the state believe that I’ve been fighting for them, helping them, whether it’s advocating for housing or agriculture or better schools, or helping to represent their interests well in Washington. So frankly, I’m not concerned.

I’m proud to run on my record. And I think as the time goes by, I’ll continue to get broad-based support, as I have in my other elections.

SHIELDS: Senator, how do you feel Don Powell has done as the federal coordinator? He was a former FDIC chairman, came in with a banking record. How do you feel he’s handled the situation?

LANDRIEU: I think his performance has been mixed, honestly. I like him very much personally, and I find that he is a very honorable person. And I think he means well.

In his defense I’ll say that, because there was no plan for catastrophic disaster. His office itself, his position was created in kind of an ad hoc way.

It doesn’t have a lot of authority. He cannot direct the secretaries of HUD or Transportation. He only can use his personal influence. He is very personally close to the president. He has the president’s ear. He represents the president’s interests.

But he lacks authority in his office to really command resources, shift resources. No secretaries have to listen to Don Powell. They’re not required to.

So, there are lots of problems with the way his office is structured. Hopefully, we’ll have a better system next time.

But he works hard at his job. And he does try, I think, to be, in most instances, an honest broker.

I’m looking for him to make a public statement very soon about the discrepancy in funding between Louisiana and Mississippi. And I’m going to hold him accountable, to explain to the country that issue, which is really non-negotiable – I mean, you know, it’s a no-brainer, if you look at the numbers.

And hopefully, he’ll step up to the plate and help Congress understand that Louisiana most certainly was shortchanged in its Community Development Block Grant funding.

HARLESTON: Senator Landrieu, thank you very much for being on this edition of Newsmakers.

LANDRIEU: Thank you.

(BREAK)

HARLESTON: Bruce Alpert, tell us, what did you learn from the interview this morning with Senator Landrieu?

ALPERT: Well, the state has a lot of work to do and a lot of needs. Many of them are going to have to be, if the recovery is going to succeed, addressed on Capitol Hill and with the administration.

I think she expressed some optimism that Congress would be receptive. Only time will tell if her optimism is correctly placed.

She says she’s optimistic about her re-election chances. I guess most candidates are. Though I should tell you she has the nickname “Landslide Landrieu,” because her first two elections have been very, very tight, very narrow victories.

So, I guess that’s what I took from it.

HARLESTON: Do you think that she’ll be able to pull off a landslide? Or is someone going to come out that’s going to give her a real challenge?

ALPERT: I think it’s going to be a tough race. I think it’s very winnable for her. I think her reputation has improved as a result of her efforts during and after Hurricane Katrina. But I think it’s not going to be a cakewalk, unless the Republicans fail to find a competitive candidate.

HARLESTON: Gerry Shields, what did you pick up from today’s interview?

SHIELDS: I think the idea that this recovery is going to take decades, not years. And a lot of the critics say it’s not moving fast enough.

But FEMA and Don Powell will tell you that, you know, New York still has a big hole in the middle of the city that occurred six years ago, and FEMA is still paying out for the Northridge earthquake that happened in 1994.

So, this is going to be a real long process. And the city is going to have to prove itself resilient to get it done.

HARLESTON: How much work is it going to take for the senator to get some of these programs through Congress and get more money into New Orleans and the Louisiana area?

SHIELDS: I think she’s done a pretty good job on the Senate floor. If you ever see her, she really hammers at her colleagues.

And she really keeps the issue at the forefront of Congress, more than probably any member in the delegation. And I think we can look to see her do that again in this war supplemental bill that’s coming up.

The House Democrats have said that they are willing to work with the state to get this money. So, it’ll be interesting to see this fight occur.

HARLESTON: Bruce Alpert, you brought up the issue of corruption. Do you think that that’s going to be something that’s going to weigh on the minds of her colleagues and make them a little reluctant to send money to New Orleans and Louisiana?

ALPERT: I don’t think it’s going to be a major impediment. I think that most people are sophisticated enough to realize that this does not represent the entire state, that the victims of this hurricane, as the senator indicated, are not to blame for the corruption that the state has experienced. In some cases, they may well be victims of this corruption.

I think, if anything, it will be the lack of available federal cash right now, because we’re facing increasing deficits and the cost of the war in Iraq, and a lot of competition from domestic programs and a president threatening vetoes. So that, I think, is more of an impediment than corruption.

HARLESTON: Gerry Shields, do you see any kind of support for revision of the Stafford Act, so that items that have been damaged or have been destroyed can be replaced at an equal or greater value?

SHIELDS: Well, let’s hope so. I mean, it is a horrible act, as we’ve learned through this catastrophe. And I think the senator put it right, that it works for tornadoes, and it works for small hurricanes, and it works for smaller disasters.

But there’s been a House bill introduced that would change a lot of the regulation. And I think the senator plans to introduce a similar measure in the Senate.

So, I think it’s a critical issue for the next catastrophe that the United States may face.

HARLESTON: We’ve been talking about the state of New Orleans, Louisiana, two years after Katrina, with Senator Mary Landrieu, who was with us from New Orleans, and here in the studio reporters Bruce Alpert of the “New Orleans Times-Picayune,” and Gerry Shields of the “Baton Rouge Advocate.”

Gentlemen, thank you very much for being on the program.

ALPERT: Thank you.

SHIELDS: Thank you.

END