Rideau, who is 66, worked for years as a manager at a local liquor store. Most of his family has passed away. He has spent the last two weeks at his home, a single-room apartment in a poor section of town just a few blocks from Lake Pontchartrain. He was home when the storm hit. It nearly ripped away his roof, and when the floodwaters began to rise, he floated his television on his mattress to save it. Then he stood still for the better part of the day, most of his body submerged. “The water level was up to here,” he says, pointing to his window sill. When it receded, there were a couple of inches of mud coating everything. He has been scrubbing ever since. “Just glance at the floor,” he says, pointing to the clean linoleum on one side of his bed. “Show you what kind of work I’ve been doing.”

Rideau is one of hundreds, if not thousands, who have not yet responded to Mayor Ray Nagin’s call to leave the city. The police say they are coming for them, but it won’t be any time soon. “We are going to compel people to leave their houses,” said Marlon Defillo, a spokesman for the New Orleans police department, on Thursday night, during the department’s dinner barbeque at the end of Canal Street. “It could be a week from now. It could be two weeks from now.”

Downtown New Orleans has been transformed into the safest city in America, a block of office buildings and hotels where as many as 10,000 law enforcement officers base their operations. At the southern edge of the city, where antebellum mansions abut the high levees on the Mississippi River, the damage appears limited to a few broken windows and some leaves shaken from the trees that line St. Charles Avenue. News organizations have begun to rent homes there to save on the hotel fees.

But in the poorer wards, residents still wander through their mud-strewn homes confused, unsure what the evacuation orders could mean. When they run low on food or water, they walk to a major road to flag down Army convoys or passing journalists. When they sit on their stoops, they worry they could be dropped in the sort of chaos that last week befell the Superdome and the convention center.

“They got to put me in a room by myself,” said Anthony Brumfield, a 47-year-old veteran of Operation Desert Storm, who lives across the street from Rideau. “I know I would strike out and hurt someone. I want to save people. I don’t want to kill people.”

Brumfield came back from the war sick, he says, prone to outbursts of violence. He lives on disability checks that his older brother, Nolan, cashes, but he does not know what has happened to his older brother. Until he retrieves a bank statement, he does not know how to spell his older brother’s name. “I am just praying to God that he is all right,” he says, as his hands shake and he begins to cry. In the meantime, he is rationing his medication. “All I want is to survive,” he says.

Across town Ott Howell is staying put in the French Quarter. He has 20 gallons of water, and a museum to guard, the Beauregard-Keyes House, a collection of the Civil War belongings of Confederate Gen. PGT Beauregard, where Howell worked before the flood. Howell calls Beauregard “one of the great generals of the war of northern aggression.” “This house kind of becomes a part of you,” he said as he stood on the front stoop. Howell doesn’t have a lot of food, but he says he can hold out: “I can do a month on body fat alone.”

At Lee Circle, a stop on the Mardi Gras parade route, three old men sit on folding chairs drinking red wine and liquor from bottles, trying to keep up their town’s famous spirit. “A day without a martini is a day without sunshine,” says a 77-year-old native who gives his name as Peter Coby, a pseudonym he has used in the past to sign his paintings. “I have children all over the world. I don’t want them to pick up a paper and see that I am staying. Because that makes me an asshole.”

Those who do decide to leave are escorted to an evacuation center that has been set up in a parking lot at the north end of the convention center. Staff Sgt. Dennis Lance, of the Army’s 82nd Airborne, spends his day escorting people down the road to the buses. Since Sept. 11, 2001, he has been through two tours of Afghanistan and several months in Fallujah, Iraq. “It’s bad to see it when it is your country,” says Sgt. Lance of the mountains of refuse that still surround the Convention Center. “But I’d rather be here.”

Officials at the evacuation center, the main one in New Orleans, say about 600 people left Friday, down from 900 to 1,100 three days ago. The rate has been dropping by 100 to 200 a day.

Cleaning crews have begun sweeping up the piles of trash. They scour the garbage for the bounty that looters left behind. A 16-year-old high school student with a broom says he found a loaded .40 caliber Glock in a garbage can and turned it over to the police. He found seven new Citizen watches, each one worth more than $200. The cleaning crew split them among themselves. He will pawn his, he says, because his girlfriend gave him the Fossil watch he is wearing. “I value my life,” he jokes. “Hey, need a cigarette case? Brand new.”

A man named Arthur Petivaf wanders onto the street, holding the leashes of his three dogs. Their names are Pepper, Pardo and Luca. Petivaf has spent most of the last week sleeping in a parking garage, after helping to evacuate hundreds of his neighbors. Until the storm, he was in real estate. He says he owned five houses in the area. Now he holds his pants up with a belt made of telephone wire. He does not want to go to the evacuation center.

“They are going to kill my dogs,” he says.

“It’s going to be better,” says Sgt. Lance.

“I know they are going to send me 1,000 miles away.”

But Petivaf is tired, and Sgt. Lance speaks softly and reassures him about his dogs. Before long, Petivaf and his dogs are preparing to board a bus for the New Orleans International Airport, where he will be processed. Then he will be sent on to somewhere else. Neither Petivaf nor anyone else knew where.

The Republicans in the House are likely to pass a continuing resolution keeping government running for the time being that includes $3.7 billion in offset funding for disaster aid. The Senate’s measure contained $6.9 billion. The latest news is that Rep. Louise Slaughter failed to get the Democratic proposal into the resolution, making it likely that either the House will fail the pass the resolution (many Republicans don’t support it because it doesn’t cut enough spending), increasing the risk of shutdown, or the Senate will stay in session next week and pass it with more disaster aid, forcing it back to the House, where it could fail again.

This is a great way to fund a government, right?

I imagine that the GOP is betting that obstructionism and a potential shutdown will be blamed on “Congress,” generically, and they have learned that they can absorb that hatred and turn it into voter cynicism that leads to increased support for conservatives who hate the government. Reid and the Democrats, meanwhile, will probably cave at the last second to avoid a shutdown. And everyone will say, “oh dear, what is wrong with Washington,” and the answer to that question will remain “Eric Cantor.”

UPDATE: Well, the other problem is “John Boehner,” who is just very bad at his job. The continuing resolution failed 195-230, with Democrats holding out due to the FEMA funding mess and dozens of Republicans voting no because Boehner has no control over them.

Of course Rick Perry doesn’t want to see Texas burn, so it is rational of him to ignore his rhetorical distaste for the federal government and demand that it help. And Texas could use the help, because Perry and the Republicans who control all three branches of Texas government have severely slashed the budget of the Texas Forest Service.

Perry’s fanatical opposition to raising revenue to close Texas’ budget gap meant that his allies in the Legislature had to find creative ways to cut costs, like cutting $34 million over the next two years from the agency that fights wildfires. The Forest Service is mostly volunteer-based, and the cuts will largely affect the state’s assistance grants to buy volunteer departments the tools they need to fight fires.

The Forest Service was appropriated $117.7 million for the 2010-2011 fiscal year. That is not enough to cover the expense of fighting the fires currently burning across the state. For the 2012-2013 fiscal year, which began this month, the agency was appropriated $83 million.

The state has already approved supplemental spending to pay for firefighting that has already taken place, which is also $61 million short of what is needed. So, in other words, the budget intentionally appropriates less money than everyone knows the Forest Service will actually need in order to maintain the illusion of fiscal responsibility. And the Republicans will demand more federal money to make up the gap. While decrying federal spending.

Ken Layne draws a connection between gutting the Forest Service budget and the growing trend of municipal budget slashing done primarily to prove seriousness about the moral necessity of “austerity” in these Tough Times. But Perry’s not allowing everything to go to hell, like the people of Costa Mesa, Calif., so much as he’s requiring fiscal irresponsibility to pay for very basic services, like putting out fires. No new taxes and balanced budgets until it turns out we need money really bad!

The shortfalls in FEMA’s disaster aid account have been obvious to lawmakers on Capitol Hill for months — and privately acknowledged to them by FEMA — but the White House has opted against asking for more money, riling many lawmakers.

“Despite the fact that the need … is well known,” Reps. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., and David Price, D-N.C., wrote the administration last month, “it unfortunately appears that no action is being taken by the administration.” The lawmakers chair the panel responsible for FEMA’s budget.

FEMA now admits the disaster aid shortfall could approach $5 billion for the upcoming budget year, and that’s before accounting for Irene.

As a result, funds to help states and local governments rebuild from this year’s tornadoes, as well as past disasters like hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the massive Tennessee floods of last spring, have been frozen. Instead, FEMA is only paying for the “immediate needs” of disaster-stricken communities, which include debris removal, food, water and emergency shelter.

“Going into September being the peak part of hurricane season, and with Irene, we didn’t want to get to the point where we would not have the funds to continue to support the previous impacted survivors as well as respond to the next disaster,” FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate told reporters at the White House on Monday.

Republicans controlling the House and the Democratic-controlled Senate may be headed toward a battle over whether to cut spending elsewhere in the budget to pay for tornado and hurricane aid.

A top leader in the tea party-driven House says that chamber will find those offsetting spending cuts. The Senate, however, is likely to take advantage of a little-noticed provision in the recently passed debt limit and budget deal that permits Congress to pass several billion dollars in additional FEMA disaster aid without budget cuts elsewhere.

“We will find the money if there is a need for additional money,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., told Fox News on Monday. “But those monies are not unlimited, and we have said we have to offset that.”

But Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who presided over a recent hearing on disaster costs, says the number and cost of disasters have grown dramatically over the past few years.

“If (Cantor) believes that we can nip and tuck at the rest of the federal budget and somehow take care of disasters, he’s totally out of touch with reality,” the No. 2 Senate Democrat said Tuesday.

Earlier this year, the administration requested $1.8 billion for FEMA’s disaster relief fund, despite pent-up demands for much more. Appropriations for last year totaled four times that amount.

FEMA estimates that the request still left the disaster fund short by $2 billion to $4.8 billion for the upcoming fiscal year. Those are figures the agency provided to Congress this spring — before Irene or the tornadoes that destroyed huge swaths of Joplin, Mo., or beat up the South.

With recovery operations from Irene still in the early stages, FEMA spokesman Rachel Racusen said it is too early to know whether that projected shortfall has increased or by how much.

“It’s just too soon to know what any uninsured losses will be,” Racusen said.

“Even though the president himself said that we are going to do everything we can to help these communities rebuild, the rhetoric has not matched reality, and the Disaster Relief Fund is running out of money,” Aderholt said.

The likely vehicle for replenishing the disaster account is the homeland security spending bill for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. The House passed the measure in early June, but the Senate has yet to act.

A House-Senate collision over disaster aid would risk further delays in replenishing dangerously low FEMA disaster accounts.

“It’s too early to tell what the damage assessment will be and what next steps may need to be taken,” said Meg Reilly, a spokeswoman for the White House budget office.

It’s hardly the first time that longer-term rebuilding projects like schools and sewer systems have been frozen out to make sure there’s money to provide disaster victims with immediate help with food, water and shelter. But it’s frustrating to communities like Nashville, Tenn., which is rebuilding from last year’s historic floods.

The Obama White House is just the latest administration to lowball disaster relief requests. Over the past two decades, Congress has approved $130 billion for FEMA’s disaster account. But the bulk of that money, $110 billion, has been provided as emergency funding in addition to the annual budget.

Associated Press writer Alicia Caldwell contributed to this story.