HOME / chatterbox: Gossip, speculation, and scuttlebutt about politics.

Bush to NYC: Drop DeadHow the Electoral College intercepted $9 billion for Sept. 11 relief.

By Timothy NoahPosted Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2002, at 6:32 PM ET

"We are at war, and we must pay the price to fight a war," the White House pronounces in its proposed budget for fiscal year 2003. But that price doesn't appear to include $20 billion that the Bush administration promised—and that Congress subsequently authorized—to help rebuild lower Manhattan after terrorists leveled the World Trade Center. In the Feb. 5 New York Times, Raymond Hernandez reports that only $11.1 billion has been turned over to New York. The Bush budget does not include the remaining $9 billion. (Technically, a small part of that $20 billion is supposed to help rebuild the areas in Pennsylvania and around the Pentagon in Virginia that were also destroyed on Sept. 11. At any rate, the authorization language stipulates that $20 billion is a floor, not a ceiling.)

RSS

Here is how White House budget director Mitch Daniels spun the omission at a briefing yesterday:

[A]id to New York will eventually total well over $20 billion. It's not going to be proposed that way in any one budget because this is going to be a multiyear project. It's going to take years to rebuild infrastructure, subway, perhaps sea wall and other very expensive things. We won't know for a long time exactly how much it is. It's very clear, though, that as we deliver on the commitments the president has made, unprecedented commitments, most of it at 100 percent federal funding, to New York, that the total will run in excess of the $20 billion figure that was sort of a good-faith guess by New Yorkers at the outset.

Obviously this gives the White House an enormous amount of wiggle room. Spending the emergency funds over several years gives the Bush administration ample opportunities to double-count money it would have allocated to New York even if Sept. 11 had never occurred. And already there's a minor controversy over whether a $5 billion victims' compensation fund will be counted against the $20 billion. Daniels said at first that it would, adding that anybody who complained about that was "playing a money-grubbing game." (Later, a budget-office spokeswoman told the Times that the victims' comp would not come out of the $20 billion.) New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has likened the Bush administration's attitude to that of Gerald Ford when the Daily News ran its famous headline, "Ford to City: Drop Dead."

Why the casual contempt for the needs of a city that, after all, remains a disaster area? The Electoral College, stupid! It has often been noted that the "winner take all" allocation of electors in most states disenfranchises Republican voters who live in majority-Democratic states and Democratic voters who live in majority-Republican states. People don't vote for president—states do. But the Electoral College also tends to foster an unhelpful "winner take all" ethic when the presidential victor disburses funds from the federal treasury. That's why Bill Clinton spent eight years lavishing money on California. The corollary to "winner take all" spending is "loser take nothing." Given New York's overwhelming presidential preference for Democrats, the Bushies are well aware that whatever money Bush's treasury doles out in New York won't buy him a single electoral vote in 2004. In a Sept. 12 item, Chatterbox predicted that Sept. 11 would eventually stimulate the economy because it would occasion greater government spending. That spending is underway, and early signs suggest the economy is indeed rebounding. But Chatterbox overestimated the Bush administration when he suggested that it would spend big bucks to rebuild New York even though it would receive no electoral benefit from doing so. It isn't.

Some of the blame for this sad situation rests with New York itself. That's because New Yorkers, and liberal Democrats generally, tend quietly to favor maintaining the Electoral College. Why? Because the Electoral College gives disproportionate power to heavily urban states. Indeed, large-population states get even more benefit from the Electoral College than small-population states do. (To learn why, read "Faithless Elector Watch: Gimme 'Equal Protection.' ") But when the urban states lose, they lose big. Perhaps this latest consequence will persuade Sen. Hillary Clinton, who in the immediate aftermath of the 2000 election said she'd introduce legislation to abolish the Electoral College, to make good on that pledge.

E-mail Timothy Noah at .

E-MAIL

RECOMMEND... Get Slate RSS Feeds

Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.

COMMENTS

Notes From The Fray Editor:

Robert Niles says the Electoral College favors small states. Steven Hill of the Center for Voting and Democracy says the system favors swing states: "The competitiveness of the contest is the decisive factor, and for Election 2000--and probably 2004--a mere nine states, large and small, with only 102 electoral votes, were up for grabs." His post is long and detailed and recommended.

Reader Comments From The Fray:

There is a simple solution to the Electoral College problems that the mass media will hate. Choose Electors on the same basis as Members of the Congress, one per congressional district, just as Congressmen would be elected, and two per State, as Senators would be chosen. This would potentially re-enfranchise an upstate New York Republican, such as I am.

Now for the media problem with this: Why would the media hate it? It would make determining the winner less simple for them, and they have to get out that prediction and get on to the next subject. We can't waste time checking to see that things are done the way they are supposed to be done! We have to get to that commercial break!

The Electoral College worked exactly as it was supposed to in the 2000 Presidential election. The so-called problems with it are the result of the media over-anxiety for a fast solution.

--Tom Kieffer

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

Perhaps I'll be accused of betraying my home town, but I actually think the Bush Administration is taking the right position when it comes to the disbursement of disaster relief funds to New York.

The Administration correctly observed that rebuilding downtown New York will be a "multi-year process," which is probably a polite way of saying that no matter how much money the Feds give New York this year, it will spend all of it and come back next year, asking for more. Given that obvious truth, what's the point of giving New York extra money up front?

I think that New Yorkers can trust the Administration implicitly when it comes to this issue, because the Bushies have a lot of excellent reasons to play straight with this town. Not for the sake of New York itself, mind you (Chatterbox is right to observe that any Republican President popular enough to carry New York doesn't need it), but because the events of September 11 make helping New York a good thing as far as the rest of the country is concerned.

If Bush wants to get the maximum political juice per dollar out of his aid money to the city, though, he'll need to look higher than subways and sea walls. That sort of municipal housekeeping has never been where the national votes are. The smart thing for him to do, in my opinion, would be to pledge Federal money to build something on the site of the World Trade Center that will be even taller and more magnificent than the Twin Towers were. If he hurries up, the image of the New York skyline, with his project under construction at its southern tip, can form a visual theme at the 2004 GOP National Convention.

--Thrasymachus

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

(2/7)

What did you think of this article?

Join The Fray: Our Reader Discussion Forum

POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES