Senator urges aid for N.O. homes

[Anita Garcia]

Flooded-out owners deserve cash, he says

WASHINGTON -- Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens caught some heat during a visit to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans last month when some Lakeview residents thought he was questioning whether their neighborhood should be rebuilt.

The veteran Republican lawmaker said he had been misunderstood, and on Thursday he sounded almost like a New Orleanian himself, taking up the city's cause before a Senate committee.

Stevens said the levee breaches that flooded the area were "man-made disasters" and that Congress should come up with a financial bailout for people whose homes were ruined.

"There is an extra federal responsibility in cases where levees fail," Stevens told fellow members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

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