As Congress Reviews What Went Wrong, It Finds Itself in Disarray

When a Senate committee opens hearings today on what the government did wrong in response to Hurricane Katrina, there will be a conspicuous absence at the witness table: No one who actually handled the disaster will be there.

Hesitant to interfere with relief operations in the storm-ravaged South, lawmakers in Washington will be left to grill veterans of past disasters. That is emblematic of how hard it is for Congress to grapple with the calamity that has washed away much of the rest of its legislative agenda.

The hurricane is testing Congress’ ability to do something that the lumbering institution is ill-equipped to do: move quickly and decisively on a huge, bipartisan project.

In their early response, members of Congress instead have been doing what seems to come more naturally: spending lots of money, hurling partisan insults and holding hearings -- even if the most pertinent witnesses cannot attend.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) has decried the lack of focus in Congress’ response so far and called on GOP leaders and the White House to do more to set priorities among the ideas, bills and hearings flowing through the Capitol.

“I have been extremely concerned about this because I think we are going to wake up six months from now or three months from now and realize that a haphazard approach has not been effective either in resolving the problems in the Gulf Coast or in managing the taxpayers’ money effectively,” Gregg said Monday on the Senate floor.

Sharing those concerns, Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) has prepared a letter to President Bush urging him to put a coordinator in charge of overseeing spending on the recovery effort. “Who’s going to manage and help Congress decide what to fund?” he asked in an interview. “Conventional approaches are going to cause total chaos. If we leave it up to committees, if we leave it up to individual claimants telling us what they need, we’re in for a real mess.”

Republican leaders have tried to coordinate plans for investigating what went wrong in the hurricane response by proposing a joint House-Senate committee. But even that has not gotten off the ground, because Democrats have objected that it would be stacked in favor of Republicans and prone to cover up rather than investigate the Bush administration’s mistakes.

Senior GOP aides and administration staffers began meeting last week to plan longer-term policy for rebuilding the damaged region. But that has not stopped lawmakers from offering their own ideas in the meantime.

“It’s hard to be patient when you are flat on your back,” said Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.). “But we’ve also got to make sure our leadership pulls us together to coordinate our efforts.”

The situation underscores how thoroughly the Katrina aftermath has challenged and changed Congress’ rhythms. Republicans who run Congress, not usually inclined to draft grand government designs, are being asked to consider new aid to thousands of displaced people. Two political parties so polarized that they can hardly agree on the time of day are being asked to come together to rebuild a city.

The short- and long-term policy questions that now dominate are a far cry from Congress’ more routine ideological issues, such as abortion and Social Security, where lawmakers tend to hew to party lines.

“They are not used to serious oversight or real deliberation,” said Thomas Mann, an expert on Congress at the Brookings Institution. “It’s all, ‘Are you with the president or against him?’ ”

For members of Congress representing the devastated area, the debate is immediate and personal. Lott waxed literary when he spoke Tuesday about the cleanup of his home state. “These are times that try men’s souls,” he said on the Senate floor.

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) also bore witness, bitterly denouncing the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- as well as the bickering and partisanship he hears in Congress’ debate over the hurricane’s fallout. “I saw horrific scenes in the days after the storm. I smelled sweltering stench. But what I sometimes hear coming out of Washington was far more sickening.”

At the same time, House members and senators from the region are being treated to acts of kindness on Capitol Hill. Dozens of senators directed their staffs to help Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.), whose office installed six extra phone lines to handle the deluge of calls seeking help. Other Senate offices sent meals to her staff, which was working around the clock. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) personally delivered lobster rolls; Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) sent salmon.

Delegations from the gulf region will be asking soon for far more from their colleagues. In a bipartisan House-Senate enterprise, lawmakers from the area are compiling a wish list of what aid their states need.

At least nine committees and subcommittees have planned hearings this week on Katrina-related subjects, including the effectiveness of hurricane forecasting, housing programs for hurricane victims and the role of private charities. The broadest inquiries into the government response are being held today by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and Thursday by the companion House panel. But those committees’ chairmen said they would not call any of the frontline officials of FEMA or state and local agencies to testify, at least for now, because that would detract from relief efforts.

Instead, the Senate panel will hear from officials with experience handling major disasters, including former California Gov. Pete Wilson, who was in office during the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Lawmakers will ask for advice about what initial aid the government should provide in the wake of the hurricane.

A bipartisan delegation of about 20 senators will be touring the region at the end of this week. In the House, however, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has been discouraging lawmakers from taking trips for fear they will get in the way of rescue efforts.

Lawmakers are also finding ways to recast their own legislative priorities in terms of hurricane response. Republicans say, for example, that the damage caused to the nation’s energy supply strengthens their argument for opening more of Alaska’s wilderness to oil and gas exploration. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), a longtime foe of trial lawyers, is pushing a bill that would limit lawsuits against people who volunteer to help hurricane victims.

The intensity of Congress’ focus on hurricane relief was plain as the Senate tried Tuesday to finish work on a routine appropriations bill. It was slowed by a flurry of amendments to provide additional funding for the battered region, including a $1-billion plan to aid law enforcement agencies through a program that Republicans want to abolish.

That proposal did not pass. Republican leaders urged restraint until a broader package could be developed, a view supported even by lawmakers whose constituents stood to benefit.

“We need to approach hurricane funding needs in a coordinated manner, not in an ad hoc” way, said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.).

Times staff writer Richard Simon contributed to this report.