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Bill Clinton: Bush Policies Hurt Louisiana Blacks

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Ex-president Clinton, whom President Bush has rewarded with a prominent role in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, returned the favor on Sunday - by blasting Bush's economic policies as racially divisive and saying that New Orleans' black population was right not to trust him.

Asked why African Americans believed race was a factor in relief efforts so far, Clinton told ABC's "This Week:" "This is a matter of public policy. And whether it's race-based or not, if you give your tax cuts to the rich and hope everything works out all right, poverty goes up and it disproportionately affects black and brown people."

"And in Louisiana," he added, "if what you do affects poor people disproportionately then it will disproportionately affect black people."

"That's what they did in the 80s and that's what they did in this decade," he continued.

"In the middle, we had a different policy. We concentrated tax cuts on low- and middle-income working people."

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  After listing programs during his administration that he said helped poor blacks, the ex-president claimed: "We know what works. And we had a program that was drastically reducing poverty and they got rid of it and they don't believe in it."

Clinton also sought to deflect blame away from Louisiana state and local officials for bungling Katrina evacuation efforts.

Asked whose fault it was that New Orleans' bus fleet wasn't pressed into service, Clinton said:

"All I can tell you is that when James Lee Witt ran FEMA, because he'd been both a local official and a federal official, he was always there early and we always thought about that."

Clinton said that because both he and Witt came from backgrounds with "a disproportionate amount of poor people ... we were sensitive to the racial issue."

The Bush's evacuation plan, he claimed, made no provisions for poor blacks:

"You can't have an emergency plan that works if it only affects middle-class people and up. ... If we really wanted to do it right, we would have had lots of buses lined up to take them out and also lots of empty vans."

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