Far beyond the Beltway

EDITOR'S NOTE: This editorial originally appeared in The Advocate on Tuesday.

We're glad that President Barack Obama visited Louisiana on Tuesday to survey the damage from this month's historic flood, which left much of the state underwater. Now is the time for leaders of Congress to follow suit.

Obama has pledged the full resources of his administration to ease relief and recovery efforts, and we welcome his willingness to help. But the scale of this disaster demands resources that require Congress to approve special funding. Though the president can do much, lawmakers control the purse strings of the nation's treasury. That's why it's important for members of the House and Senate leadership to see the devastation in person.

Some have questioned the value of such visits, arguing that in an age of instant global communication, leaders can deliberate over disaster assistance from beyond Louisiana and dispatch what's needed with a phone call or mouse click. But although images of the flood have reached the rest of the country on a regular basis, there's no real substitute for assessing the disaster up close.

Seeing is still believing, as Hurricane Katrina demonstrated. In the days immediately after the storm, then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert questioned whether Congress should approve the money required to help make New Orleans whole. "It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed," he infamously observed. But after visiting the city, Hastert played a constructive role in getting federal aid approved. Now disgraced and in federal prison, Hastert rarely gets mentioned as an exemplar of public conduct these days. But his conversion on Katrina underscores the abiding virtue of thinking about public policy at ground zero of an urgent national need, and not from the comfortable remove of a congressional cloak room.

In 2006, a 34-member, bipartisan congressional delegation that included key Capitol Hill players such as U.S. Reps. Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner visited New Orleans for a three-day survey of Katrina's devastation. The trip was a turning point in building a congressional consensus to support Louisiana's recovery.

The aftermath of the Great Flood of 2016 is unfolding in a different season of our national life. Obama is in the final months of office, and the election to replace him is consuming much of the nation's attention. On Capitol Hill, the mood is very much one of kick-the-can and wait until next year.

But if leaders of Congress could see the site of this disaster as we have seen it, they might understand that Louisiana cannot languish while the conceits of Capitol Hill partisanship deadlock the recovery.

Now is the time for House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring a bipartisan congressional delegation to Louisiana. In a summer of bitter bickering between Republicans and Democrats, this crisis calls members of both parties to join in the common purpose of helping to lift Louisiana from ruin.

From far beyond the Beltway, in houses and churches and schools still touched by dampness and despair, the people of Louisiana are resolved to rebound, but we need the help of a government pledged to our general welfare. That reality will be clear enough to anyone who bothers to board a plane and see it for themselves.