Checking in on "the Bush plan"

President Bush did something that he has never done since stealing the White House in 2000: he accepted responsibility for something that could lead thinking Americans to the conclusion that the Bush Administration has made a mistake. This is shoking enough, but what gets me going tonight is a report from the American Process Action Fund Progress Report from the 16th of September. I have really trusted them to do the research on their stories, the fact that the Progress Report is full of inline links to other news outlets makes me trust them, but I had never really factchecked them for myself.
One quote from the Progress Report struck me:

You won't find specifics in Bush's speech, but you can find them on the Heritage Foundation's website, since it proposed the idea in its "manifesto on post-Katrina policy" last week.

I had to ask myself if any organization would publish such stupid things as "repeal the Davis-Bacon act." I went looking and there it was on the Heritage Foundations website. Not just "repeal Davis-Bacon," which ensures that workers on government contracts get at least minimum wage, but other atrocities:

• Repeal or waive Clean Air Act regulations that hamper refinery construction or expansion.
• Waive or repeal gasoline formulation requirements under the Clean Air Act and other regulations to allow gasoline markets to work more flexibly and efficiently and reduce costs.
• Allow more drilling in the United States, including in ANWR and offshore areas along other coasts

So Hurricane Katrina is nothing more than an opportunity to strip away good laws in the name of corporate good. This sickens me.
Of course, there were parts of the Heritage Foundations report that aren't so bad if I trusted this administration to do them correctly.

• Postpone payment of 2004 and 2005 individual and business income taxes for Katrina?s victims. Waive penalties for withdrawals from tax advantaged savings such as IRAs and 401(k) accounts, as Congress did for the victims of 9/11.
• Give displaced workers generous, refundable tax credits (direct subsidies) for the purchase of the kind of health insurance that best meets their personal needs. (This should also include assistance to those who don't fully understand how to file. The wealthy can easily figure out (or hire someome) how to get these tax credits, but will the poor?)
• The key to long-term coverage for Americans who have lost employment-based coverage is to change the law to let displaced Americans use the same tax breaks and other subsidies that apply to employment-based plans for coverage they can obtain through organizations they trust and are close to them.
• In most disasters, local resources handle things in the first hours and days until national resources can be requested, marshaled, and rushed to the scene. Catastrophic disasters are of a completely different character. State and local resources are exhausted from the onset. The administration needs the authority and organization to build an effective national response system. (This coming from a "smaller government" philosophy, by the way.)

Like I said. I don't trust that these good things will be equitable.