Published: May 03, 2006 11:41 pm      

Shipyard assistance a questionable priority

U.S. Sens. Thad Cochran and Trent Lott, both R-Miss., in the face of intense opposition from colleagues in their own party, have made principled stands on behalf of the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast.

Mississippi’s senators should avoid overreaching, however, as the Senate completes work this week on a $106.5 billion emergency spending bill to cover storm relief and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Curiously, critics of out-of-control federal spending have chosen Hurricane Katrina recovery to make their case against pork-barrel politics. We can think of hundreds of better examples within the federal government, but midterm elections are approaching, and re-election-minded senators are looking to prove their mettle as fiscal conservatives. Mississippi and Louisiana are easy targets for senators from other regions in search of pork poster children.

For that reason, Cochran and Lott should pick their battles carefully in the spending bill currently pending in the Senate. They won — just barely — a principled fight on behalf of $700 million for relocation of the CSX rail line. If the railroad, located about three city blocks inland, is moved to existing tracks further north, the current CSX right-of-way could be used for construction of a critical east-west thoroughfare that would take pressure off the current U.S. 90, which runs along the beach. The new highway would allow for quicker, safer evacuations of coastal residents during hurricanes. More important, it would push commercial development — except for casinos and other massive structures — off the beach. The further inland a building, the less damage it incurs during a storm. And the fewer the buildings damaged or destroyed, the lighter the federal government’s recovery tab after a storm. An amendment by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., to strip the CSX funding from the bill failed by one vote.

Less credible — and possibly harmful to the overall cause of hurricane recovery — is the $500 million that Lott and Cochran are seeking for defense giant Northrop Grumman, which has a shipyard in Pascagoula. Corporate welfare, as critics are labeling the shipyard aid, should be a low priority, given the more urgent needs of the coastal region. An amendment to strip the Northrop Grumman funding failed Tuesday but almost certainly will be a point of contention when Senate and House negotiators begin hammering out a compromise bill.

Lott and Cochran shouldn’t jeopardize the overall bill by insisting on the Northrop Grumman aid.