After stumbling miserably out of the gate, George W. Bush has finally caught up with the American public and now realizes that there is widespread support for rebuilding New Orleans. He has finally struck the right rhetorical chords, pledging to “renew our promise as a land of equality and decency.” He went on to say, “As we clear away the debris of a hurricane, let us also clear away the legacy of inequality.”

With Bush, it is always better to ignore the language and examine his record. He has made some sweeping endorsements of diversity that would have made even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proud. But he used Dr. King’s birthday to announce his opposition to a pair of University of Michigan affirmative action cases that went before the Supreme Court. Over Bush’s objection, the conservative court upheld Michigan’s law school admissions program while invalidating a more numbers-oriented undergraduate plan.

There are already troubling signs that the Bush administration plans to use this natural disaster to recycle some old Bush plans that were previously rejected. All of the water hadn’t been drained from Canal Street in New Orleans before Bush proposed $5,000 “Worker Recovery Accounts” to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding. Under the plan, those left unemployed by Katrina can use the one-time grant for job training, day care, transportation, education or anything else that will help them land a job.

The administration proposed a similar program two years ago, but Congress rejected the $3.6 billion plan. If a person found a job within 13 weeks, under the plan he or she could keep up to $1,000 left in the account. Liberals opposed the plan because they thought it would be the first step in replacing unemployment insurance. Conservatives, on the other hand, objected because they did not want to create another layer of bureaucracy.

Even more disturbing is Bush’s determination to use public funds to subsidize private education.

The Department of Education announced a proposal that would provide nearly $500 million in federal funding to help students enrolled in private schools in the disaster area relocate to private schools elsewhere. This is a variation of Bush’s voucher plan and would use limited public funds to subsidize private education. The flawed plan calls for each student receiving up to $7,500.

Some conservatives, fearing growing deficits and an uncomfortable federal role in the relief efforts, are calling for across-the-board cuts in order to fund the recovery and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others are challenging Congress to remove pork projects from recently enacted legislation.

Bush says he has no plans to raise taxes or do away with previously enacted tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy.

Former President Bill Clinton, in an interview on the Today Show, said it would be “crazy” to maintain those tax cuts in view of the unexpected new expenses. Clinton and former president George H.W. Bush are heading up private relief efforts to help the victims of Katrina.

Expenses associated with recovering from Hurricane Katrina, estimated to be $150 to $200 billion, should not be used to distort the serious deficit problems the nation was facing before the disaster. The Congressional Budget Office had projected that the federal deficit would exceed $300 billion a year for the next decade, totaling nearly $4.5 trillion by 2015. And that was long before Katrina came ashore.

An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that the repeal of some of the previously enacted tax cuts would more than offset expenses associated with Hurricane Katrina.

“The tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 cost more each year than the total amount likely to be spent on Katrina,” the center said. “The cost of tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 is $225 billion this year alone and will climb to higher levels each year in the future, as more of the tax cuts enacted in 2001 take full effect…The cost of the tax cuts in a single year exceeds the total anticipated costs of all expenses related to the hurricane over the years to come.”

Rather than making the “bold” decision that he promised by repealing at least one of the tax cuts, George W. Bush will inflict even more cuts in programs designed to help the very people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Bush’s words may sound like fellow Texan Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society Programs, but they are not matched by similar action.