Leadership Quote by Lynn Westmoreland

Westmoreland’s line is the sound of Washington trying to talk itself into responsibility while flinching from the price tag. Dropped into the churn after Hurricane Katrina, it frames disaster relief not as a moral emergency but as a budgeting logistics problem: conditions are “changing every day,” so money should move in cautious, repeatable tranches. On paper, that’s managerial prudence. In practice, it’s a political strategy that turns urgency into process.

The rhetorical move is the question that isn’t really a question: “why don’t we appropriate…” It’s collegial, almost casual, as if $10 billion is an item you add to a cart. That breeziness does two things at once. It signals seriousness (big numbers, regular intervals) while lowering the emotional temperature around catastrophe, nudging listeners to view a drowned city as a line in a ledger that can be revisited on a set schedule.

The subtext is risk management, not for New Orleans residents, but for lawmakers. Weekly or 10-day increments create built-in off-ramps: reassess, recalibrate, claim fiscal restraint, avoid committing to a total figure that can later be weaponized. It also quietly concedes uncertainty, which is honest in crisis, but it lands as bureaucratic detachment when people need immediate housing, medical care, and functioning infrastructure.

Context matters: post-Katrina outrage centered on government delay and incompetence. Westmoreland’s incrementalism reads as an attempt to look responsive without being cornered by the scale of failure. It’s governance by installment plan, a style that protects the appropriators more reliably than the appropriated-for.