WASHINGTON, March 02, 2006, Noon - Rep. Elijah E. Cummings today said President Bush and his administration should "pay" for ignoring advanced warnings on Hurricane Katrina.

     "It's alarming, it's very upsetting," Cummings told Redding News Review. "Where there is a duty and then there is negligence, or omission, or intentional acts that bring harm to others then those people who were irresponsible or negligent [have] to pay."

   The former head of the Congressional Black Caucus made the comment following an award ceremony for the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding on Capitol Hill.

    "It seems to me that the Bush administration would be bending over backwards to make the Katrina victims whole but yet in still they aren't doing that," the Democrat said. 

    Rep. Mel Watt, current chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said he was not surprised to hear Bush and his Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff knew the levees would break.    

    "I have suspected that in advance there was information about the weakness in the levees," said Watt, a Democrat.

    "Just as there was information that indicated that Iraq had noting to do within 9/ll, or there were no weapons of mass destruction," he said, "This president makes up his own mind what the facts are without regard to what information he has...It's not surprising that he has done it yet again in this case."

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