Reply #7: Yes it is, & here is the proof

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June 7, 2001
Bush signed his massive $1.3 trillion income tax cut into law—a tax cut that severely depleted the government of revenues it needed to address critical priorities. Bush’s first budget introduced in February 2001 proposed more than half a billion dollars worth of cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers for the 2002 fiscal year. Bush proposed providing only half of what his own administration officials said was necessary to sustain the critical Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Project (SELA)—a project started after a 1995 rainstorm flooded 25,000 homes and caused a half billion dollars in damage. Similarly, less than two weeks after Bush signed his tax cut on June 7, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that “despite warnings that it could slow emergency response to future flood and hurricane victims, House Republicans stripped $389 million in disaster relief money from the budget.”
Mike Parker, 1999 Republican nominee for Mississippi governor, was rewarded for his Republican service by President Bush, who appointed him to head the Army Corps of Engineers on June 7, 2001.

June 23-37, 2001
Times–Picayune publishes series on effects on hurricane hitting S. Louisiana
http://www.nola.com/hurricane/?/washingaway/

February 2002
The president unveiled his new budget, this one with a $390 million cut to the Army Corps. The cuts came during the same year the richest 5 percent (those who make an average of $300,000 or more) were slated to receive $24 billion in new tax cuts. The cuts were devastating. The administration provided just $5 million for maintaining and upgrading critical hurricane protection levees in New Orleans—one fifth of what government experts and Republican elected officials in Louisiana told the administration was needed. Likewise, the administration had been informed that SELA needed $80 million to keep its work moving at full speed, but the White House only proposed providing a quarter of that. These cuts came even though the potential cost of not improving infrastructure was known to be astronomical. A widely-circulated 1998 report on Louisiana’s insurance risks said a serious storm could inflict $27 billion worth of damage just to homes and cars—and that didn’t include industrial or commercial property. Local insurance executives estimated in 2002 that the total damage would be closer to $100 billion to $150 billion—estimates that now look frighteningly accurate.
When Mike Parker headed to Capitol Hill for annual budget hearings in February 2002, he couldn’t hide the truth. Under questioning, he admitted that “there will be a negative impact” if the President’s budget cuts were allowed to go forward. The White House fired Parker within a matter of days.

February 2, 2004
White House on February 2 released a budget with another massive cut to infrastructure and public works projects—this time to the tune of $460 million. As the Denver Post later reported, “the Southeast Louisiana Flood Control project sought $100 million in U.S. aid to strengthen the levees holding back the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, but the Bush administration offered a paltry $16.5 million.” The Chicago Tribune noted that the Army Corps of Engineers had also requested $27 million to pay for hurricane protection upgrades around Lake Pontchartrain—but the White House pared that back to $3.9 million.
Gaps in levees around Lake Pontchartrain, which were supposed to be filled by 2004, would not be filled because of budget shortfalls. Corps officials told the Times-Picayune in April “that the lack of money will leave gaps in the structure, weakening its effectiveness and pushing back its completion date.” Worse, because budget cuts had been compounding for three years straight, “even after all the gaps are closed, the levee must settle for several more years until it reaches its final height.” By June, the newspaper reported that “for the first time in 37 years, federal budget cuts have all but stopped major work on the New Orleans area’s east bank hurricane levees.”
“We are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us,” Jefferson Parish emergency manager Walter Maestri said at the time, desperately begging the Bush administration to reevaluate its budget decisions. As he noted, the budget cuts meant that levee gaps would accumulate and “we’ll end up so far behind that we can’t catch up. … And the further behind we get, the more critical the safety of the city becomes.” But almost no one in Washington was listening. Ten days after the Times-Picayune story, the U.S. House passed a $155 billion White House-backed bill to cut corporate taxes. The Senate had passed a similar bill the month before. Republican lawmakers from the Gulf Coast—who purported to be concerned about infrastructure budget cuts—all supported the new tax cut.