September 16, 2005
JS-2725

The Honorable John W. Snow
Prepared Remarks: Visit to the Home Depot
Atlanta, GA

Good morning. Thank you, Bob, for hosting me at this terrific Home Depot facility. Everyone in the Home Depot family is working so hard to help the survivors of Hurricane Katrina, and it was a pleasure to hear about your efforts, first-hand.

It is good to be in Atlanta, and I am glad to be in the South on this National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for our brothers and sisters who were taken from us by a terrible act of Mother Nature, a storm so devastating that this great nation was deeply wounded by it.

Helen Keller once said that: "The world is full of suffering; it is also full of the overcoming of it." The overcoming of this event is going to be a mammoth task, requiring great commitment and dedication from every party involved: government, business and individuals.

In the government, we are committed to rebuilding the communities that were ravaged by Katrina, and as we do so we know we must help people rebuild their lives with a sense of hope and opportunity. Our overriding goal must be that everyone has an opportunity to build a better life for themselves and their families. Nothing less is acceptable.

Everyone here at Home Depot knows that America is a real do-it-yourself country. People who come to your stores, the "weekend warriors" of home improvement, are all working on their piece of the American Dream. That spirit of independence and pride will be at the center of the rebuilding that will take place over the coming months.

We are fortunate to have a really strong, vibrant economy in this country, and that is going to be critical as we pursue rebuilding efforts. With a strong economy, we can afford to meet any challenge.

The first priority of the government, and of corporations like Home Depot, has been to save lives. Rescue, shelter, food and water, medical attention – all these things came first.

The next step is giving people financial footing. Treasury is working to ensure that victims of the hurricane can get access to financial resources, starting with the checks they receive from the government, like Social Security and unemployment pay.

And once hurricane survivors are on their feet, I know they will embrace being back in charge of their own lives, making their own decisions. Katrina derailed their independence for a short time, but they'll get it back. That's what Americans do.

I visited the Gulf Coast last Friday with two of my Cabinet economic team colleagues – Commerce Secretary Gutierrez and Labor Secretary Chao – and was pleased to see that hurricane survivors are already finding new jobs at Department of Labor One-Stop Centers. This is great to see, because finding work, having a job, is essential for every person and every family who is starting their lives over after this tragic event.

Home Depot has always been a good neighbor in whatever community you're in because you create lots of those essential, sometimes life-changing, jobs. And in times like these, when so many lives have been devastated by a natural disaster, you're better neighbors than ever.

I appreciate all that the employees and leadership of Home Depot is doing to help the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. It's been wonderful to see the outpouring of help from companies like you, McDonald's, Wal-Mart and Johnson and Johnson, to name just a few others, over the past couple of weeks.

You've offered employees whose job was affected by Hurricane Katrina the opportunity to continue their employment at any Home Depot store. You made a direct cash donation of $1.5 million to support immediate relief and recovery efforts as well as long-term rebuilding – for example, you made a direct donation of $500,000 to nonprofit organizations that produce and rehabilitate affordable housing for low- to moderate-income homeowners to assist with the repair and rebuilding efforts. You are also working with your suppliers to donate materials, such as tarps, flashlights and bottled water, and generators to emergency management organizations.

Across the board, companies like yours are giving millions in cash donations to the Red Cross and other relief groups. Businesses all over the country are running employee donation programs and matching their employees' donations. They're giving millions in product donations, from pharmaceutical to technology products.

This outpouring of help – both within the companies' families and externally, to the broader relief efforts – reminds us that this is a country where people take care of each other. We help each other get back up on our feet.

Something I want to be clear about today is that increasing the tax burden on the American people at this time won't help in that way – in fact, it would hurt recovery efforts. Keeping the tax burden lighter leads to innovation, economic growth and job creation.

Katrina is having, and will have, an economic impact on us, and we need to focus on maintaining a thriving economy, not burdening it with taxes that would slow it down.

The President's economic leadership – most notably his well-timed tax cuts – really turned our economy around over the past three years. And although there is clearly no "good time" to be hit by a devastating natural disaster, I do believe that we were fortunate to be standing on very solid economic ground when this terrible storm struck.

The fact that our underlying economic fundamentals are so solid undoubtedly enhances our ability to deal with this disaster.

Over the short term, we'll feel an economic hit from Katrina. Jobs and homes have been lost, and that's a serious blow. The price of gas, already uncomfortably high, has been impacted by the storm, and that hurts, too. High fuel prices act like a tax on business and on family budgets.

We believe that economic growth will slow in the last quarter of this year as a result of Katrina, but are optimistic that rebuilding efforts will give GDP, jobs and our overall economy a lift by the first quarter of next year.

Thanks to the generosity of a nation and our unique spirit of hope and independence, I am confident that the residents of places like New Orleans and Gulfport Mississippi and southern Alabama will recover. We picked ourselves up after 9/11 and other disasters, we have the will and the resources and the resolve to do so again.  I am confident we will again. It's the spirit of Americans to do so.

We are committed to helping the region re-build, to helping people re-build their lives. And we want to do so in a way that is fiscally responsible. Will the relief and reconstruction be costly? Of course it will – but I want to assure you that this Administration is not, and will not stray from our course of federal deficit reduction. With continued economic strength – which we will enjoy with the continuance of the President's good economic policies – we'll be able to help our neighbors and continue to reduce our deficit.

Thank you very much for having me here today.