It's not surprising that Congress was absent. Before Katrina, the federal government deserted the poor of New Orleans, as they have in communities in many other cities. Barack Obama said it best on the Senate floor shortly after the storm: "I hope we realize that the people of New Orleans weren't just abandoned during the hurricane. They were abandoned long ago to murder and mayhem in the streets, to substandard schools, to dilapidated housing, to inadequate health care, to a pervasive sense of hopelessness."

Sadly, during the first half of 2006, many members of the 109th Congress continued their long retreat from government efforts to alleviate poverty. The scorecard reveals one particularly inexplicable example: the Louisiana delegation's unanimous support to repeal the estate tax. According to IRS figures, only 1,607 out of 4 million taxpayers in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi even pay that tax. Repealing the estate tax would cost the government $24 billion a year and increases the likelihood that Congress will cut necessary programs that assist low-income Americans.

Before Katrina, nearly 50,000 poor New Orleans lived in neighborhoods where the poverty rate exceeded 40 percent. New Orleans ranked second among the nation's fifty largest cities on the degree to which its poor families, mostly African-American, were clustered in extremely poor neighborhoods. The storm exacerbated the economic woes of the community. Yet, Senator Vitter voted against raising the minimum wage, against the Specter-Harkin Amendment to increase funds for health, education, training and other low-income programs, and in favor of extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the neediest.

The policymakers of Louisiana exemplify the problem in Congress as a whole. While they appear to recognize that it is impossible to recover from a natural disaster without significant federal support, they have failed to recognize that it is just as impossible to recover from the society-wide disaster of poverty without a significant federal role. To address the State of Poverty, Congress must embrace the fact that it will take a nation.