De Camptown Doo Dah! Doo Dah!

FEMA allocates $5 billion for trailers to house Katrina victims.

"We are going to spare no effort to get them the help that they need," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said last week when asked about the spending total and the increasing deficit. "The president has made it clear, in meetings he's been having, that we are going to show the true compassion of America in all that we do."

Mr. King and others who voted against the $51.8 billion bill said the issue is not how much is being spent, but how. Speaking by telephone from Louisiana, where he had spent the night at a Red Cross shelter in Baton Rouge, Mr. King said the trailer houses are a perfect example.

The first bill called for 200,000 trailers, at a cost of $3.3 billion. Then, even after learning that only 30,000 trailers could be delivered now, the administration requested money for 100,000 more in the second bill, for a total cost of $4.9 billion. They will be located "some place about 100 miles north of New Orleans" in a temporary trailer-house city that eventually will be bulldozed, Mr. King said.

Things are working out very well for them, all concentrated in hundreds of thousands of trailers. Suggested name for the camp (thanks to Dean Nugent, LA coroner's office) might be "Cockroach Strip" , with contracts later going to Israeli experts for the eventual bulldozing.