September 9, 2005
JS-2710

The Honorable John W. Snow
Prepared Remarks: Visit to Baton Rouge

Good afternoon. Mayor Holden, thank you for hosting us in your fine city that has suffered so much since Katrina brought her devastating winds and rains.

I'm glad to be in Baton Rouge with my colleagues from the President's economic team. We want to see what's being done to help people, and we want to know what the next steps need to be, what help needs to come next to help rebuild people's lives.

Today we've seen a lot of great work being done here.  The employees of the center we just visited are doing incredible work to help scores of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina get their federal benefits – like unemployment checks or special disaster unemployment payments.  They've really been doing great work here and I commend them for their efforts.

Katrina wreaked incredible devastation on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana.  In New Orleans, one of America's great cities is submerged.  Thousands of businesses have been destroyed and scores of homes have been lost.  Hurricane Katrina is having a terrible impact on people's lives.  That's why centers such as this are so important in helping people get their basic federal benefits. 

We also know that the last thing people here need to worry about right now is taxes. That's why we quickly implemented extensions of tax deadlines, so that people in the affected areas who would otherwise have had taxes or returns due on September 15^th don't have to worry about that deadline.

We were also pleased to be able to announce yesterday something that we believe will give workers and businesses an easy and effective way to contribute to the charities that are doing so much to rescue, comfort and care for the victims of this terrible tragedy.

This action allows employers to adopt leave-based donation programs under which employees could convert vacation, sick or personal leave into cash donations for hurricane victims. In turn their employers would make cash contributions to charitable organizations involved in relief efforts.

This is a time to help. The scale of this catastrophe is unprecedented, and the generosity of the American people is extremely important to Katrina's victims. We believe that this announcement will help workers and employers as they seek ways to help their fellow Americans.

America's tradition of generosity, of helping our neighbors, is one the most important advantages we have in terms of recovering from this disaster. We are also fortunate that we are dealing with this situation from a position of economic strength. The fact that our underlying economic fundamentals are so solid enhances our ability to deal with this disaster.

Over the long term, I'm confident that the region will recover and rebuild. We picked ourselves up after 9/11 and other catastrophic events, and we have the will and the resources and the resolve to do so again.  I am confident we will; it's the spirit of Americans to do so