I’m in the process of writing a longer editorial about why it might be dangerous for liberals to make strong calls for Federalizing New Orleans over the governor’s objections. But this latest news and discussion in response to the White House’s plans for spending hundreds of billions rebuilding New Orleans takes the cake. In the days and weeks following Hurricane Katrina, the complaints were how the federal government didn’t build strong enough levees for New Orleans, how FEMA should have bought its own resources instead of co-ordinating state resources, how the federal government didn’t do this, and didn’t do that, before, after, and during the hurricane.

Now, the federal government says it wants to do those things, and suddenly people are realizing that this is going to cost money, big money, and when the federal government pays for it, we all have to pay for it. What did they expect? That after telling the president he should have spent more money, that he was going to refuse to do so? It isn’t difficult to goad the federal government into spending more money.

I fully expect that if this bill passes, we’ll have the same people complaining that blue states always end up paying for red state problems. Maybe next time they think about goading the federal government into spending more money, they’ll shut the fuck up for a few seconds and think, first, if they really want to goad the federal government into taking charge of local efforts.