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After the political tidal wave of 1994 swept conservatives into control of Congress, Republicans doggedly tried -- and repeatedly failed -- to repeal a Depression-era law that requires federal contractors to pay workers the prevailing wages in their communities. Eleven days after the deluge of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush banished the requirement, at least temporarily, with the stroke of his pen.

The president's suspension of the Davis-Bacon rules on wages is one example of the many avenues the disaster has opened for the administration and lawmakers of both political parties to incorporate long-held -- and normally polarizing -- policy goals into the huge federal aid racing to the Gulf Coast.

Federal procurement agents are using the outpouring of federal largess -- $62 billion so far -- to ease quotas for minority and small businesses in government contracts. Republicans are trying to revive, for schoolchildren displaced in the disaster, their frustrated efforts to create government vouchers for private schools. Democrats, meanwhile, are trying to use the emergency to expand Medicaid health insurance for low-income families and to reverse some tax cuts Bush pushed through Congress.

Taken together, the efforts have the potential to alter domestic policy in a way that parallels the reshaping of realms such as military intervention and civil liberties after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

With a weakened president, a Republican Pa