Unbelieveable. As I just said in another post, I'll be $35k in the hole after this. I can think of a few things to spend that 35+ billion on. If they wonder the money has barely been spent, they ought to come down here and take a drive for a while. People haven't really begun fixing their houses in earnest because:

1: There are still areas of the city that are off-limits.

2: Fema has not yet made a decision about whether to force people to raise their houses to flood-level. This will cost 30-60 THOUSAND dollars per home. As has been previously noted, this applies in lower income areas. The people living here are the ones least able to afford it. Keep in mind, around here, Higher valued property are closest to the water, and therefore on higher groud, as the river and lake is at sea level as opposed to the rest of New Orleans, which is up to 17 feet below.

3: People still cannot return because there is NO housing to be had. and the housing that IS available is running about double the rate of before Katrina.

4: There are many people who were forced to get jobs elsewhere. Until the housing situation stabilizes, the vast majority of businesses will be unable to re-open. The only jobs available right now are at retail-outlet and restraunt type places. These jobs currently pay between $6-9 per hour. Who can afford to pay $1000 a month for a 1-bedroom at this salary. This would be your entire salary BEFORE taxes at the low-end of that mark.

5: Materials for rebuilding are extremely rare. Good luck finding sheet-rock or 2x4's. If you DO find them, be prepared to pay through the nose for it and stand in a 1.5 hour line for the privelege to do so.

6: Some of the people living here are still fighting with the insurance companies. I recieved my check for wind-damage, and it'll cover about half of my damage. They estimated I should be able to fix my fence for about $1200 but every estimate I get is coming in closer to $3000. The roof estimate is closer, but still too low.

7: If you DO come back and are lucky enough to have a job, good luck doing anything else but work. Most places are only open from 8-5 M-F. Since those are the hours I work, when am I supposed to buy the things I need? I could go at lunch, except for the fact that simply going to the grocery takes upwards of an hour and a half, longer than I get for lunch. The only time we working slobs can go to the store at all is on the week-end, along with everyone else. So what we have is a lot of empty parking lots, but the ones that are NOT empty are like the day before Christmas. Totally packed. Who wants to deal with this if you are perfectly comfortable somewhere else?

8: Basic services like phone and water have a 2-month waiting list to be handled. So if you DO get a new apartment, be prepared to be without a phone or cable until at least January.

So yeah, I guess we are having a hard time spending all the recovery money. It's a process that will take quite a while. Things will NOT happen overnite and no amount of money will make it happen any faster. It will just take time.

As to them pulling some of the money back, for obvious reasons this pisses me off. Since things are barely begun, Who the hell knows how much money this is going to take. Take the money back AFTER things are rebuild and there is a surplus. Or use it to help fund our government infrastructure that is falling apart around our ears. The power company has had to declare bankruptcy protection because there is no money coming in from these dead houses and they are having to completely rebuild the power grid from scratch. Both the state and the City of New Orleans has laid off thousands of workers because of a lack of tax-base income. There is more work than ever to be done, but less people to do it because of some bass-ackwards law stating that FEMA cannot fund local governments. The state is estimating a BILLION dollar tax shortfall. Again, this is on the budget, not to mention all the extra money going out to other projects that were NOT budgeted but have become neessary. Yeah, we don't need the help, we'll do it ourselves. Sure.

Let's not forget that the gulf coast region produces 25% of the nation's oil supply, but we get less in oil revenues than any other state. Yeah, that's fair.