Obama: End the empty words in New Orleans

new orleans -- Democrat Barack Obama said Sunday that the country could not fail New Orleans again and that as president, he would keep the city in mind every day.

“The words ‘Never again’ cannot be another empty phrase,” the Illinois senator said in front of one of the few rebuilt houses he saw on a brief tour of the city’s Gentilly Woods section. “It cannot become another broken promise.”

Obama is the first of several presidential candidates from both parties who are set to visit New Orleans in connection with the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on Wednesday. President Bush also is expected to mark the occasion with a trip to the Gulf Coast.

Obama, whose day began at First Emanuel Baptist Church, said that long before Katrina, the nation had failed to lift up New Orleans, a city with persistent struggles such as poverty and poor public schools. He said that that could not happen again and that Americans had a “collective responsibility” to one another.

“Racial discord, poverty, the old divisions of black and white, rich and poor, it’s time to leave that to yesterday,” he said.

“In rebuilding, we’ve got an opportunity to do more than put up a foundation that for too long failed the people of New Orleans,” he told the congregation. “In rebuilding, we’ve got an opportunity to build something better, a foundation that can put up with a lot, upon which the children of New Orleans can build their dreams.”

Several residents told Obama of a poor infrastructure and slow pace of home rebuilding grants. He walked past lots with weeds higher than his head, and he saw Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers and signs advertising such services as mold remediation.

“I just feel like we’ve been forgotten about,” resident JoAnn Fleming Bradley told him.

He criticized Bush for what he said was a lack of urgency in rebuilding the city.

“I can promise you this: I will be a president who wakes up every morning and goes to bed every night with the future of this city on my mind,” Obama said.

He outlined a plan he said would help restore the region: grants for community policing; incentives such as loan forgiveness programs to try to attract doctors and college students; places to stay for displaced residents who wanted to return; and a national catastrophic insurance reserve to help homeowners struggling with their premiums.

Two other leading Democratic candidates, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, also have outlined rebuilding plans and touched on similar themes.