BusinessReport.com

Much is being made of it, as well it should be. The $12 billion that Congress approved earlier this month marks perhaps the most significant funding for Louisiana since it was purchased for $15 million in 1803.

The state’s D.C. jackpot includes:

• an additional $3 billion for the Road Home program that will compensate nearly all eligible housing grant applicants;

• $7 billion in coastal restoration and hurricane protection projects—the most received by any state—from the override of the president’s veto of the $23 billion Water Resources Development Act;

• for lagniappe, $2 billion in military projects from a defense spending bill.

Not all the checks are in the mail yet. The water projects are authorized but the money must still be appropriated in separate bills—and the work will take years to complete. Besides levee improvements in the New Orleans area, the bill contains $1.9 billion as a down payment on coastal restoration and $886 million for a 72-mile system of levees and locks to protect nearly defenseless Terrebonne and lower Lafourche parishes from future storms and flooding.

The Road Home funds, on the other hand, are practically in the bank, as soon as President Bush signs the measure on which the state’s money is hitchhiking, the “must-pass” resolution to continue government operations for another month.

The last leg on the Road Home map is for Congress to resolve the state’s dispute with FEMA by allowing $1.2 billion in hazard mitigation money to be used for housing grants.

With that, Louisiana finally will get its fair share of hurricane relief, proportionate to the damage inflicted on Gulf Coast states from the 2005 storms. The congressional action should also answer the critics, some in-state, who labeled as “whining” and “ungrateful” the persistence of Gov. Kathleen Blanco and the state’s congressional delegation in pushing the federal government to fulfill the promises Bush made in Jackson Square.

As huge as the water bill override was, it was not unexpected. The happy shocker was the Road Home $3 billion. The governor was not all that confident the added funding would come through before the program ran out of money in December and she left office in January, with up to 50,000 damaged-property owners still in limbo.

Unknown at the time was that Sen. Mary Landrieu, a member of the Appropriations Committee, was in secret negotiations with the chairman, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and influential member Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. It was critical not only to attach the Road Home money to a bill sure to be passed and signed, but also, said Landrieu’s press secretary, Adam Sharp, “to have the element of surprise, so it would go in before people would have a strategy to block it.”

The press secretary only elaborated by saying unnamed Republicans might cause interference, if only to delay the funding in order to horn in on the credit. In a town where taking credit is half the race, Landrieu’s office made the announcement within minutes of negotiators agreeing to include the funds.

Sen. David Vitter, who has sparred recently with Landrieu over judicial appointments and public housing, quickly closed ranks by calling upon his GOP colleagues not to stall the Road Home money. For his part, Vitter laid claim to getting commitments from 21 of the 34 Republican senators who joined Democrats in overriding the president’s veto of the water bill.

Yet the big political winner is Landrieu, which is no accident on the part of leading Senate Democrats. Widely regarded as her party’s most vulnerable senator up for re-election next year, she is somewhat armored by last week’s bonanza. It complements her work on offshore revenue sharing in the 2006 energy bill, which passed when Republicans controlled Congress.

Still, in the larger part of the state that is beyond the hurricane zone, Road Home completion and levee upgrades are nice concepts but have no direct impact on voters’ lives and, thus, Landrieu’s political fortunes. As usual, she will have to battle to survive.

Before then, politics aside, a major bipartisan effort by the current and the future governor and the congressional delegation is still required to complete and secure funding for the recovery, hurricane protection and coastal restoration. Resume whining.