NBC Nightly News Watch and my taxes

Last night on NBC, they ran the story linked in the title about the amount of money that actually gets to people who were hammered by Katrina. The Bush-Clinton Katrina fund is going to give money to Louisiana. Can that money be used to pay the FEMA bill (whatever the audit says we owe)? And then I want to understand this - the government which we pay for with our taxes, can't help pay for the destruction brought on by a hurricane but private financial contributions once they have been filtered through the process of philanthropy and have been reduced further because of salaries and expenses can? Sure there's a system.

I would love to see how my money is broken down into taxes. I mean, I get paid amount X. The government takes 33 percent or so. There are state income taxes - whatever percent that comes to (5?). Then there is city tax - at least here there is. 1 percent. Then I pay sales tax - 6 percent on the dollar. What is the tax on my phone, gas, cable, etc? Looks to me like I get to keep around 50% of my money. So if I make 50K every year, I actually get to spend 25K on what I want? The rest goes to government in some form or another. And there's not enough to fund every project that people come up with. Whatever happened to saving some for a rainy day (or a blustery, rainy, hurricany day in New Orleans that caused the levees to break)? How about a little fiscal responsibility after you clean up the mess you created in NOLA with the ineptitude of the Army Corps of Engineers. Thanks.

Looking forward to playing the State of the Union Drinking game tonight.