On New Orleans Visit, Obama Tells Critics, 'I'm Just Getting Started'

In a raucous town hall meeting that at times resembled a church revival, President Obama on Thursday fired back at critics who say he's accomplished little in his nine months in office, telling a roaring crowd, "I'm just getting started."

"I never thought any of this was going to be easy," said Obama, speaking at the University of New Orleans in his first visit to the Gulf Coast city since taking office. He poked fun at his critics, asking, "Why haven't you solved world hunger yet? It's been nine months. Why?"

"What'd I say during the campaign? I said change is hard," Obama said. "Big change is harder. ... I wasn't kidding about it being hard."

"Those folks who are trying to stand in the way of progress ... let me tell you, I'm just getting started," he said. "I don't quit. I'm not tired. I'm just getting started."

Four years after Katrina, evidence of the storm's devastation lingers. About 1,500 people in Louisiana are still living in temporary housing, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, although that is down from a high of more than 90,000.

And the Army Corps of Engineers is only a third of the way through a $15 billion system to provide 100-year flood protection for the city.

However, the agency says 76 disputed projects in Louisiana have been resolved since Obama took office, and more than $1.4 billion in aid has been sent to Louisiana, along with more than $160 million to Mississippi. And it says that more than 89,000 Louisiana households and 45,044 Mississippi households displaced by Katrina -- and by Hurricane Rita, which hit a month later -- have found longer-term housing solutions.

The emergency agency also says more than $1 billion from the stimulus program has been targeted for New Orleans.

The administration's efforts have received praise. In August, on the fourth anniversary of Katrina, the Times-Picayune quoted Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, as saying he had a lot of respect for emergency management Administrator Craig Fugate and his team.

"There is a sense of momentum and a desire to get things done," the newspaper reported Jindal as saying.

Still, the length and nature of Obama's visit are drawing ire.

Obama will spend less than four hours in New Orleans -- visiting a charter school and holding the town hall meeting -- before flying to a fundraiser in San Francisco, California. He will not be visiting other areas of the Gulf Coast that suffered damage from Katrina in 2005, such as the Mississippi Coast.

"The people of New Orleans deserve more than a 'drive-through daiquiri' summit with the president," Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, said in a news conference Monday. 

And Sen. David Vitter, R-Louisiana, wrote in a letter to Obama that "if the town hall is the only major event of the visit, I truly think it will be deeply disappointing to most citizens."

The White House said that Obama has been to New Orleans five times since Katrina, and that since Obama took office, there have been 35 trips to the Gulf Coast by more than 20 senior administration officials.

"The president made a promise to come to New Orleans and wanted to fulfill that promise as soon as his schedule allowed," White House spokesman Nicholas Shapiro said.

Katrina, which FEMA called the "single most catastrophic natural disaster in U.S. history," killed more than 1,800 people in Louisiana and Mississippi.

As a candidate, Obama criticized the government's response, saying at Tulane University in February 2008 that the storm conjured up for many Americans "the memory of a moment when America's government failed its citizens."

"When the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast extended their hand for help, help was not there," he said. "... People looked up from the rooftops, and too long they saw an empty sky."

In his weekly radio and Internet address on Katrina's anniversary, he said he would not "tolerate red tape that stands in the way of progress or the waste that can drive up the bill.

"Government must be a partner -- not an opponent -- in getting things done."

He added, "With every tragedy comes the chance of renewal. It is a quintessentially American notion that adversity can give birth to hope and that the lessons of the past hold the key to a better future."