On the second anniversary of the day Hurricane Katrina ravaged American homes, devastated communities and shattered lives, it is hard to forget the failure of the Bush Administration in responding to the disaster.

President Bush promised two weeks after the storm that “when communities are rebuilt, they must be even better and stronger than before the storm.”

That promise remains unfulfilled.

An estimated 189,000 children were dislocated in the aftermath of Katrina. As many as 100,000 children are still displaced.

Some children have attended as many as nine different schools in 18 months. And those who do return do not have the fabric of continuity – attending the same schools with the same teachers -- that children who are now going back to school all over America enjoy, according to a recent report from the Children’s Defense Fund.

That same report found that as of January, only 258 out of 101,657 Louisiana homeowners received their share of the billions in federal money earmarked to help them repair or replace their homes.

But while Louisiana homeowners were waiting to get their share of money promised to them, friends and relatives of Mississippi Republican Gov. Haley Barbour wasted no time in collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars from hurricane-related business, according to a Bloomberg News story published on August 16.

According to the article, a nephew saw his lobbying fees more than double in the year after Barbour appointed him to a special reconstruction panel. In June, federal agents raided a company owned by the wife of another of Barbour’s nephews, which maintained federal emergency management trailers.

When President Bush promised that “bureaucracy is not going to stand in the way of getting the job done,” the American people took his word to the bank. But two years later we have a bankrupt bureaucratic system that is unable to meet the most basic needs of people who have already lost so much.

Sam Cooke once sang that “a change is gonna come”. We, as Democrats, know that the winds of change should include a responsive and a responsible government, a government that ensures that Katrina survivors do not go another year without a place to call home.