Bush restores Davis-Bacon

The AP reports that President Bush has acknowleged the folly of forcing Gulf Coast workers to accept lower wages for post-Katrina restoration.

The Bush administration will reinstate rules requiring that companies awarded federal contracts for Hurricane Katrina pay prevailing wages, usually an amount close to the pay scales in local union contracts.

Rep. Peter King (news, bio, voting record), R-N.Y., was among congressmen critical of the administration's decision to waive the requirement and who met Wednesday with White House chief of staff Andrew Card. He said Card told them the wage requirement would be reinstated Nov. 8.

"We thought it was bad policy and bad politics, and I guess they accepted our argument," King told The Associated Press. "There's no need to antagonize organized labor."

So, Haliburton will have to make do with hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars minus a living wage for its Gulf Coast work force. Poor babies. Hope they can stay afloat.

This was an outrage from the beginning. It is hard to believe that it occurred to Bush to do this in the first place, and then that he thought people would just swallow it. Thank God for everybody who fought the good fight on this one.