When people experience a trauma in their lives, they usually think more deeply about what is most important to them.

The same is true for our nation experiencing the trauma of Hurricane Katrina. Even those of us who live hundreds or thousands of miles away from the Gulf Coast watched the victims of Katrina up close and personal in our living rooms.

Even if our physical lives were untouched by Katrina, we shared many of the emotions of horror and fear and loss. And we shared the American spirit of reaching out to help in any way we could through countless deeds of generosity, creativity, sharing, and compassion.

Our Congress has joined this spirit by allocating dollars to help repair the damage that the hurricane inflicted. But our Congress should also join us in re-thinking our national priorities and healing the wounds that existed long before Katrina.

As we watched desperate victims suffering for days, we confronted the reality of Americans literally being left behind: mothers and children, the very old and the very sick, and people with nowhere to go. These people were not only left behind during the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, but are left behind day in and day out in cities and towns across our country, including our own.

The floodwaters of the hurricane washed away any attempt to ignore the truth of poverty in America and in our state. We saw with our own eyes what trickled down from our national policies of tax cuts for the rich, budget cuts for programs that help low and middle-income Americans, inadequate investment in infrastructure and lack of respect for the work of government agencies. The result of these policies, displayed in horrific detail, was an unconscionable and embarrassing disaster.

And although not nearly as visual as Katrina, news came from the Census Bureau, just days before the hurricane hit land, that poverty and the number of Americans who are uninsured rose again in 2003 even though it was the third full year of an “economic recovery.”

Before Katrina, our president and congressional leadership had a plan for American priorities. The plan was to cut $35 billion from services like health care and nutrition for the most vulnerable Americans and to cut $70 billion in taxes for the wealthiest Americans, leaving many children and families further behind and increasing our national deficit.

Before Katrina, some of our own lawmakers in Arizona were warning against spending state tax dollars that have already been collected on vital needs and were discussing their wish for additional tax cuts on top of those already being phased in.

Before Katrina, many lawmakers worried and complained about growth in the number of Arizonans with AHCCCS health coverage — instead of celebrating the fact that AHCCCS has successfully muted growth in the number of uninsured people as private health coverage continues to diminish.

Let’s ask our president and Congress, our state lawmakers and our business leaders to take a moment to re-assess.

Let’s ask them whether health care, nutrition, good schools and safe child care should be more important than more tax cuts for business and for upper-income Arizonans who are already enjoying the best the American economy has to offer.

Let’s ask them to strengthen — not diminish — proven programs like Medicaid and food stamps that are right now giving health care and nutrition to the victims of Katrina and to millions of other Arizonans who, just like them, are struggling to take care of their families and to build a future.

Let’s ask them to sustain the spirit of compassion that followed the emergency of Katrina and to remember the words of the late Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes who said that “taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.”

Cutting programs for poor kids and families, while cutting taxes for the rich, does not make for a civilized society.

At a time when Arizonans want to ease, not increase, the suffering of the hurricane survivors, Congress and our Legislature must respond in that same spirit. If we are to avoid future disasters like the flooding in New Orleans, and if we are to spread the American dream, we all must recommit to that old American value that by investing today we will make the lives of our children and grandchildren better tomorrow.

Carol Kamin is president and CEO of Children’s Action Alliance, a nonprofit that promotes the well-being of Arizona’s children and their families through research, policy development and advocacy. Its Web site is www.azchildren.org.