"Little, If Any"

Mississippi governor Haley Barbour:

"Sounds to me like Congress is getting their money's worth in Mississippi," Barbour said.

Pearlington, MS:

While the national debate over the recovery has focused on the billions expected in federal aid and insurance, those sources have so far provided little for places such as Pearlington, and charity efforts have constituted more than 80 percent of the home rebuilding completed so far, local and charity officials said.

***

The reason for the charity's dominant role in the rebuilding is that little, if any, of the $3.2 billion in federal aid for Mississippi homeowners has reached anyone here -- it is tied up for now at the state level. As for insurance, most residents of this rural community lacked any form of flood policy. People say there just hadn't been a flood in recent memory, and of those who did have coverage, most had too little.

Sometimes the big picture gets in the way of the little picture.