Bush has no legal authority to cut wages in Katrina recovery.

As many people have pointed out one of the first thing Bush did in the wake of Katrina was waive the Davis Bacon Wage supports that require relief workers be paid a wage in keeping with the local labor market. This cut the minimum wage for all relief related workers drastically.

Turns out Bush may very well have no legal authority to waive that requirement. His actions are based on a law that was nullified in 1976, almost 30 years ago!

Details below the fold.

Quote with permission in its entirety from the FAS Secrecy Project.

"BUSH WAGE CUTS FOR RELIEF WORKERS MAY BE LEGAL ERROR

On September 8, President Bush issued a proclamation suspending the
minimum wage requirements for relief workers engaged in Katrina
recovery operations.

But in order to do so, he relied upon a statutory authority that
has been dormant for thirty years and that appears to be legally
inoperative.

"I find that the conditions caused by Hurricane Katrina constitute
a 'national emergency' within the meaning of section 3147 of title
40, United States Code," President Bush declared on September 8 as
he removed the Davis Bacon Act wage supports for workers in
Louisiana, and portions of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

But this emergency statute was one of numerous authorities that
were rendered dormant by the National Emergencies Act of 1976, and
that can only be activated by certain procedural formalities that
were absent in this case.

In particular, the President must formally declare a national
emergency under the National Emergencies Act, and he must specify
which standby legal authorities he proposes to activate so as to
permit congressional restraint of emergency powers.

Strangely, however, President Bush proceeded as if the National
Emergencies Act did not exist.

The September 8 presidential declaration was "an anomaly,"
according to a new Congressional Research Service assessment, and
it did not follow "the historical pattern of declaring a national
emergency to activate the suspension authority."

"The propriety of the President's action in this case may be
ultimately determined in the courts," the CRS report stated
delicately.

The newly updated CRS report, written by Harold C. Relyea, traces
the evolution of emergency powers and includes a tabulation of
declared national emergencies from 1976-2005.

See "National Emergency Powers," Congressional Research Service,
updated September 15, 2005 (esp. pp. 18-19):"

Great catch on the part of the secrecy project. But how are they the first ones to notice this???

In a prior administration I would have been shocked that white house staff lawyers didn't catch somthing this huge. However with this group it's more of the same. They do what they want and try to patch together legal cover catch as catch can.

Organized labor should jump all over this, as should anyone else who believes the first thing people trying to put their communities back together need is a living wage.

Update [2005-9-16 15:18:58 by Windowdog]:: To address some points made below let me just restate this. Bush could have gotten the authority to do this rubber stamped in less than a day had he chosen to do so. However he couldn't even be bothered with that. This is a brazen act of an imperial presidency to curtail the legal rights of the population without any authority to do so.

Bush didn't send in federal troops for nearly a week b/c legal hoops hadn't been properly jumped through in the Administration's opinion. But they apparently had no qualms about trampleing emergency management and labor laws designed in part to check the power of the executive.

In 1976 a law was passed that said the President had to list the powers he intended to use, thus exposing his intentions to congressional review, before he activated the powers made dormant under the act. His proclamation is meaningless legally since he had no authority to issue it at that time. Any attempts to enforce that proclamation are illegal until the situation is rectified.

More troubleing is the fact that the president flouted the law in cases where it suited him, and claimed to be legally prohibited from committing troops long after those writes had been ceded to him.

The law is meaningless to these people. They do what they want and try to spin whatever section of the legal code they can find to cover their actions after the fact.