Let The Taxpayer Gouging Begin—Part II

So after mentioning FEMA apparently paying millions for hotel rooms in the W Hotel in New Orleans, now I find out that FEMA is spending $3,500 per person per week on cruise ships to house people in Louisiana and Mississippi.

"At first, the government's $236 million deal with three Carnival cruise ships to house thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees appeared to be a smart and effective way to house thousands of Americans displaced by the powerful storm.

But now, the storm is well past, and with Congress busy at hearings to determine what went wrong, investigators are noting that the ships tapped to serve as temporary motels for the displaced are housing many fewer evacuees than FEMA originally planned.

Worse, many of the evacuees are avoiding their new floating quarters, complaining instead that onboard limits them from potential jobs and interacting with family and support groups.

The current government head count shows: 625 are aboard the Ecstasy, with a capacity for 2,544 passengers; 820 are living aboard the Sensation, with room for 2579; and The Holiday, presently docked in Mobile, Alabama has but 342 souls with full capacity of 1,486.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., did some math and noted Wednesday that if the ships were full, with 7,116 evacuees, for six months, the price per evacuee would be $1,275 a week. A seven-day Caribbean cruise could be bought for about $600 a person.

But the math gets worse – for the taxpayer.

With the cruise ships less than a third full, the cost per passenger each week is north of $3500.

It would be cheaper for the government to house evacuees in a suite at the Waldorf."

I can't say that I blame Carnival because I heard that they cancelled over 1,000 reservations to free up the boats for the operation.

I blame the idiot government employees and administrators that bought this deal in the first place.