bq. It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.

— Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.

More disgusting quotes in this vein that show this administration cut needed funding for incredibly important, science-backed projects so as to preserve tax cuts and pump more money into the war in Iraq.