Feds must keep track of relief dollars

In times of disaster, people turn to the federal government for solutions.

Help us get our stores open again.

Help us build our homes again.

Help us pay our medical bills.

Help us feed our children.

Help us, in short, put our lives back together.

It is a tall order, and in the case of Hurricane Katrina's devastation, it is unprecedented. The wreckage left behind in Mississippi and Alabama from the hurricane itself surpasses anything ever seen before in this country. Add the remarkable flooding of New Orleans and the total cost of the disaster on the American economy will be well over $200 billion.

Like it or not, the federal government - on behalf of you and me - is going to pick up a huge part of that tab. The American spirit, after all, is imbued with a deep strain of generosity.

But we need to also be aware that America has its share of charlatans, con men and shady characters. Such people are invariably drawn to large sums of money, and in the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast the sums will be very large indeed.

Thus, we expect and must demand that the government spending our money on a good cause will also have the good sense to keep an eye on the cash.

A small example of what can go wrong in the wake of a disaster was revealed a couple of weeks ago in a special report by the Associated Press about a loan program set up to assist businesses hurt by the economic downturn following the 9/11 attacks.

The Supplemental Terrorism Activity Relief program was actually not a bad idea in itself. The notion that tourism-related businesses, for instance, were at risk in the chill atmosphere that followed Sept. 11 makes sense. But what made the program questionable was that there was little or no government oversight, and that companies getting the guaranteed loans did not even have to ask to be part of the program. Banks were left in charge of determining who might or might not have been hurt by Sept. 11, and since the banks benefited from the program, too, we are left with the impression that they might have let self-interest shape some of their decisions.

That program only involved a couple of billion dollars of taxpayer money; what will be spent in New Orleans alone will dwarf that sum. Congress has already appropriated $60 billion in relief aid.

It is imperative that this money not sink below the surface of the murky waters of politics-as-usual in Louisiana, where corruption is considered a parlor sport. Congress and the president must both demand accountability from those running the aid programs, and the public must demand the same from the president and Congress.

American generosity is unrivaled, but we want our money to go to the people who need it, not to wasteful bureaucracies and shameless crooks and self-promoters.