NEW ORLEANS – In the spring of 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall spoke of the halting recovery – and a new threat of political chaos – in European nations torn apart by World War II and further disabled by an especially harsh winter. Having just participated in a gathering of foreign ministers in Moscow, Marshall was alarmed that Soviet ruler Josef Stalin, sensing opportunity for the spread of communism, seemed pleased by Western Europe’s economic troubles.
Marshall chose a strong metaphor for conditions in Europe: “The patient is sinking while the doctors deliberate.”
A similar concern has grown in recent months as debate rages about how much federal money to spend on recovery needs along the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Some advocates for the region see a hopeful model in the European rebuilding program that Marshall outlined in a speech at Harvard University on June 5, 1947. It required collaboration among European leaders and ultimately won credit for helping restore vitality to the continent’s economy.
The initiative sent $13 billion in American economic and technical help to Europe during 1948-51 – an amount worth roughly $100 billion in inflation-adjusted 2005 dollars. That figure is considerably higher than the current aid package approved for Southern states disfigured by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The amount for the European rebuilding effort does not include aid given by private organizations.
“There was the willpower of the American people to do it – and this was a country that had just been to war,” says Tulane University historian Douglas Brinkley. “If we can rebuild all of the great capitals of Europe, why can’t we do a sensible rebuild of New Orleans?”
The Marshall Plan offers a rhetorical symbol for leaders in this region who, with a $62 billion federal commitment in hand, still face skepticism in Washington about the necessity of spending far more. Federal costs associated with the terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center in 2001, California’s Northridge earthquake in 1994 and Hurricane Andrew in 1992 add up to just a fraction of the total expected need for aid in Katrina’s strike zone.
Adjusted for inflation, the New York attacks led to more than $8 billion in federal spending, while the earthquake cost $9 billion, and Andrew cost $2.5 billion, according to government estimates.
The United States has committed $250 billion so far to the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, about four times the federal commitment to the Katrina recovery in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The money appropriated for Iraq does not distinguish between military and rebuilding costs, though experts say as much as $40 billion – and counting – has been directed to rebuilding that country’s infrastructure.
During December remarks to a congressional committee, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco alluded to the Marshall Plan: “After World War II, our decision to rebuild Europe was farsighted and courageous. History will treat us well if we exhibit the same kind of political courage.”
New Orleans Councilwoman Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson was less diplomatic in October, when some members of Congress questioned the wisdom of rebuilding a city below sea level. “When you have a ravaged city, you rebuild it like we Americans helped rebuild Berlin, for God’s sake,” Clarkson said. “We’re setting new ground for America, but not for the world, and our Congress has to take note of this and treat us the same way we have treated other countries.”
Historians say there is nothing close to Katrina in terms of federal aid for rebuilding after a catastrophe on American soil.
In response to the Mississippi River flooding of 1927 – which affected 26,000 square miles in seven states, killed hundreds of people and caused wholesale destruction of buildings and crops – the federal government, with no disaster-response agency, relied heavily upon the American Red Cross and spent no more than $32 million, or $347 million in today’s dollars, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report.
A speech by President Coolidge that year illustrated the government’s minimalist approach to disaster response.
Coolidge said the federal government had a responsibility to rebuild damaged public works and help people in distress. But Coolidge insisted: “The government is not the insurer of its citizens against the hazards of the elements. We shall always have flood and drought, heat and cold, earthquake and wind, lightning and tidal wave, which are all too constant in their afflictions. The government does not undertake to reimburse citizens for loss and damage incurred under such circumstances.”
Federal officials invested more in disaster response after passage of the Federal Disaster Act of 1950, but directed spending to restoring infrastructure rather than aid to individuals. Spending mushroomed after Hurricane Camille in 1969, experts say, when federal political figures, caught up in civil rights and anti-poverty initiatives, began extending disaster help to individuals through housing, small-business loans and education grants. Researchers say the federal response to Camille cost roughly $195 million, or more than $1 billion in today’s dollars.
President Bush and some members of Congress are pushing the limits of disaster aid again by talking of a major rebuilding effort on the Gulf Coast, said Stephen Slivinski, budget analyst for the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank that pushes for restraint in spending.
“It creates the expectation that any future disasters are going to receive the same kind of treatment, and creates a dangerous precedent,” Slivinski said. “It’s going to cost more not just in the short run, but in the long run as well, and it’s sending the wrong signal to localities.”
Historians like Tulane’s Brinkley and Gunter Bischof of the University of New Orleans also are worried about sending the wrong signals – as they make the case in favor of a Marshall Plan-scale effort.
Both men are angry about what they see as a tepid federal response to Katrina. They want bold strokes, and were barely assuaged by moves in recent weeks by the Bush administration and Congress to dedicate billions of dollars to specific levee protection or relief measures. The money is not a new appropriation, but simply a redirection of unspent money from the $62 billion Congress allocated, mostly to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, weeks after Katrina struck.
Brinkley said that Bush, trying to avoid distraction from the war in Iraq, seems attuned to lessons of the Vietnam War, when President Johnson struggled to muster support simultaneously for the war and an anti-poverty agenda at home. But Bush is missing the lessons of World War II, when a “we’re all in this together” spirit prevailed in attacking tough challenges, the historian said.
“A point of history is to remind us that our times are not uniquely oppressive,” Brinkley said. “Great countries rebuild.”
Coleman Warner is a staff writer for The Times-Picayune of New Orleans.
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