How about a little restraint?

Thank God for good men like Haley Barbour who actually have brains.

Human Events: Miss. Gov. Barbour: Louisiana Aid Package Seems 'Very Excessive'---

In an exclusive interview with HUMAN EVENTS Editor Terence Jeffrey this week, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R.) outlined the combined state-and-federal effort to rebuild the vast area in his state damaged by Hurricane Katrina, saying his government would not use the disaster “as a way to gouge the taxpayers.”

Barbour said he hoped the federal government would pay 90% of the tab for repairing public infrastructure in Mississippi, but estimated the total federal costs for relief, recovery and rebuilding in his state would be under $50 billion and might not be much more than $30 billion. The $250 billion aid package being recommended for nearby Louisiana by that state’s U.S. senators, Barbour said, “seems to me very excessive.”
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In the long run, what do you want and expect from federal taxpayers in terms of rebuilding and redeveloping Mississippi?

BARBOUR: Current federal disaster relief law calls for the federal government to bear the lion’s share of rebuilding our public infrastructure. And that’s crucial.

And that means the highways, and the bridges, and that sort of thing, correct?

BARBOUR: That’s right. Ports, highways, bridges, water, sewers. It’s hard to imagine, but this storm destroyed most of the sewer system on the coast. We are finding sewer mains that have microwave ovens that somehow got jammed up the pipes.

Under the Stafford Act, the federal government is going to come in and pay 75% of the cost of building that type of infrastructure—everything from sewers to highways?

BARBOUR: We hope they will pay a higher percentage than that. But under the Stafford Act they will pay a minimum of that.

What would you like to see? Would you like to see them pay the whole bill?

BARBOUR: No, I don’t think it’s right for them to pay the whole bill, because it’s important that the state and local governments be contributing. That will help make us good stewards, because we will be stewards of our own money as well as the federal taxpayers’ money. As I understand it, there have been 90-10 splits in the past, and that’s what we would like to see. Now, the federal government is paying 100% in the immediate wake of the storm, but when we come to rebuilding our infrastructure, we would like for the federal government to pay 90% and us to pay 10%. We would not favor the federal government paying 100%.

It is one thing for the federal government to rebuild public infrastructure, as Haley Barbour suggests. It is entirely another thing for the federal government to pay for anything and everything, as Louisiana people want. Barbour for President! ;)

(Curtsy to Drudge)