Congressional Black Caucus Quick with Criticism but Slow with the Money

The Congressional Black Caucus was merciless in their criticism of President Bush in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, all but calling him a cross-burning racist. You'd think, given their demands for immediate help to the black community in New Orleans, that they would have been quick to act with the funds they raised. Not so (from Political Diary):

No one roasted President Bush more for the tardy federal response to Hurricane Katrina than the Congressional Black Caucus. Now it turns out that the group's foundation has yet to spend a dime of the estimated $400,000 that it raised for the victims of the storm.

Cybercast News Service's Marc Marano reports that the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation began the relief fund with the goal of raising $1 million, and by Sept. 21 it was reporting it had received $700,000 in corporate pledges. But according to CBCF spokeswoman Patty Rice, the foundation is actually "somewhere in the neighborhood of $350,000 to $400,000." She said it planned to collect money up to the end of the year and then have a committee decide on its uses in January or February of 2006.

Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative group that monitors charitable giving, isn't impressed by the nearly half-year delay in dispensing funds. "It sounds like the CBCF has been stressing the immediacy of the [victims'] needs when they raised the money and yet for some reason when it comes time to dishing it out they can't seem to get organized," he told Mr. Marano.

The foot-dragging is all the more remarkable given the Congressional Black Caucus's intense criticism of Mr. Bush after Katrina. In September, Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York called the president "our Bull Connor," the notorious police commissioner in Alabama who turned dogs and fire hoses on civil-rights demonstrators in 1963. His remark drew wild applause and cheering at a CBC town hall meeting in Washington that was part of the group's 35th Annual Legislative Conference. The only public correction to his remarks came from Rep. Major Owens, one of Mr. Rangel's colleagues in the Black Caucus, who insisted that Mr. Bush was "more diabolical" than even Connor.

Yet facts are stubborn things. Statistics released this month by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals found that a higher percentage of whites in New Orleans died as a result of Hurricane Katrina than did blacks. It will be interesting to see -- when the Black Caucus finally gets around to distributing its money - whether its outlays reflect that disparity.

My guess is that most of that money will end up in the campaign funds of caucus candidates.