Firms with Bush ties snag Katrina deals
White House connections attract renewed attention from watchdog groups
At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast. One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root.
Katrina may cost as much as four years of war
Government certain to pay more than $200 billion following hurricane
"I cannot put a cost figure on it," Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday in a visit to the hard-hit states.
Robert Lichter, a statistician who studies the use and misuse of numbers in public policy, cautioned against reading too much into the early figures.
"Assume that all estimates are self-interested and all estimates are too low," Lichter said, especially those coming out of Washington. "The government is like a contractor — whatever it says, triple."
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