Congress cuts recess to help victims

WASHINGTON -- With the death toll mounting in the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, Congress cut short its summer vacation yesterday to approve an $10.5 billion emergency aid package to help rescue the legions of Americans left injured and homeless by Hurricane Katrina. President Bush, meanwhile, named two former presidents to head a private fund-raising effort and urged Americans to limit their gasoline usage.

Senators approved the aid package last night, and House members -- scattered around the country and the world -- scrambled to give final approval to the assistance bill today.

''This recovery is going to be a long process. It's going to take a lot of hard work and patience and resolve," Bush said at the White House yesterday, flanked by his father, former president George H. W. Bush, and former president Bill Clinton. ''It's also going to require a lot of money. And the federal government will do its part. But the private sector needs to do its part as well," Bush added.

The two former presidents, who successfully raised some $1 billion to help tsunami victims in Asia, will team up to collect cash for hurricane victims. The emergency aid package from Congress is expected to be the beginning of federal help to rebuild the devastated areas and help displaced people find shelter and food.

In a joint statement announcing the extraordinary sessions, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois and Senate majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, both Republicans, said the Bush administration told them the government was ''running low" on emergency assistance funds and would need Congress to approve extra money before next week, when legislators were to return from their recess.

But the timing could give a public relations boost to the president and Congress -- both suffering from low ratings in national opinion polls. Bush was on a monthlong vacation at his Crawford, Texas, ranch when the hurricane hit; he returned to Washington on Wednesday, a day ahead of schedule, to manage what he described yesterday as ''one of the largest relief efforts in the nation's history."

The president is also scheduled to take a helicopter tour today of affected areas in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, and will meet with the governors of those three states on the ground. Bush is also planning to visit at least one disaster site in Mississippi, according to Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary.

In March, both the president and the Republican-controlled Congress rushed to Washington from vacations to take up the case of Terri Schiavo, a severely brain-damaged Florida woman whose husband wanted her feeding tube removed, insisting she would not want to live under such circumstances. But as Gulf Coast residents grow increasingly desperate -- and even violent -- Bush and Congress had to show they are doing something to help, said Peter Fenn, a Democratic consultant.

Joshua Bolten, director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget, said Bush was sending Congress a $10 billion request for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and an additional $500 million for Department of Defense agencies involved in recovery efforts.

Bolten said FEMA was spending about $500 million per day on recover efforts.

Though the initial funds will go toward recovery efforts, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert yesterday hinted at possible political battles over funds for rebuilding. Hastert told the Daily Herald newspaper of suburban Chicago that Congress should think carefully about whether it is worth spending billions of dollars to rebuild New Orleans, a city that sits mostly below sea level and would remain vulnerable to severe hurricane damage.

''It doesn't make sense to me. And it's a question that certainly we should ask," Hastert, an Illinois Republican, told the paper. ''There are some real tough questions to ask about how you go about rebuilding this city. . . . But you know we build Los Angeles and San Francisco on top of earthquake fissures and they rebuild, too. Stubbornness."

Hastert's spokesman, Ron Bonjean, said the speaker's comments were taken out of context. Hastert is committed to help rebuild New Orleans, Bonjean said, but wants to make sure that steps are taken -- such as improved flood-control infrastructure -- to prevent such a disaster from ravaging the city in the future. Hastert later issued a clarification: ''It is important that when we rebuild this historic city that we consider the safety of the citizens first. I am not advocating that the city be abandoned or relocated."