Gov. John Bel Edwards, who’s in Washington, D.C. for the second straight week to seek $2.8 billion to help Louisiana rebuild from last month’s flood, is undeterred by warnings that he should keep his expectations low.
That’s because Edwards isn’t making his appeal to the same Congress that voted for $60 billion in the span of a week after Hurricane Katrina slammed Louisiana in 2005, The Associated Press reports.
“What I was told to expect was that there would be a tremendous difference in the way I’m perceived than what would have happened after Katrina because even disaster recovery funding seems to be caught up in partisan gridlock, whereas that was never the case before,” Edwards says. “But that has not been my experience thus far.”
Congress was generous in approving $95 billion to help Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas rebuild after Katrina. Funding to help the Northeast after Superstorm Sandy four years ago was a much more difficult lift, with the bulk of President Barack Obama’s aid request opposed by House Republicans.
More recently, GOP conservatives have been slow to embrace the need for $1 billion or so to battle the mosquito-borne Zika virus.
Edwards, a first-year Democrat, has teamed up with the Pelican State’s GOP-dominated delegation behind a drive to add Louisiana flood aid to a short-term, government-wide spending bill that Congress needs to pass to avoid a government shutdown in a little more than two weeks.
Edwards wasn’t the only governor in D.C. this week. GOP Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, met with top Republicans on Zika aid on Tuesday and Wednesday—and was spitting fire at Democrats for holding up a GOP-drafted measure to fight the virus, which can cause grave birth defects and is spreading in Florida.
Edwards, meanwhile, met with House Speaker Paul Ryan, who was “noncommittal” as to whether Louisiana will get Obama’s full $2.6 billion request to rebuild housing and infrastructure ruined by the floods. He’s finding that the Capitol works at a much slower pace and is a stingier place than it was when Katrina smashed Louisiana a decade ago.
