WASHINGTON -- As recriminations about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina swirled about the nation's capital, the House today followed the Senate in hastily approving $10.5 billion to deal with the immediate emergency relief efforts, sending the bill to President Bush for his signature.

The Senate last night reconvened six days early from its August recess to pass by a voice vote the White House request for $10 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and $500 million for the Department of Defense in their efforts to deal with the worsening tragedy in the Gulf Coast.

But even though there was only ten minutes of debate in the House before the voice vote just before 2 p.m., several Democrats expressed dismay at the slowness of relief for the stranded victims of the flooding in New Orleans.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., said the country has thought too casually about the likelihood of disasters and insisted the damage such a hurricane could do to the Gulf Coast was long known but ignored. He also questioned whether the deployment of 11,000 National Guard personnel to Iraq delayed the aid needed in Mississippi and Louisiana.

Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., complained, "We fiddled and faddled for days and now we're told we only have five minutes per side for debate." He said that it is "unconscionable that we are having a spike in gas prices now. How dare the big oil companies use this terrible tragedy to loot the American people."

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Ca., the House Democratic leader, said the Republican leadership of Congress should have called both houses back in session much earlier as soon as the scope of the disaster was apparent. But Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Miss., said the amount of money needed in the emergency appropriations wasn't known until yesterday.

Before President Bush left Washington to tour the devastation, he said, "The results (of the federal relief effort) are not acceptable. I want to assure the people of the affected areas and this country that we will employ the assets necessary."

In taking questions later in the day, he said he was satisfied with the federal response but not with the results. He said the unexpected flooding delayed help to the stranded. He also promised temporary housing will be built by the federal government.

In Biloxi, Miss., he complimented Michael Brown, director of FEMA. "Brownie, you're doing a helluva job. The FEMA director is working 24 hours a day."

Bush also praised the Coast Guard, which has rescued 5,000 people so far and still has more to help. "We're going to help people rebuild, and we're going to listen to people who know what they're doing," Bush said.

He said a priority is getting power plants up and running. He said he would not agree it is the worst natural disaster in U.S. history but certainly is one of the worst.

After meetings yesterday on the economic impact of major refinery operations in the Gulf Coast shut down, the Bush administration today said it is releasing 30 million barrels of crude oil from the nation's strategic stockpile and that another 60 million are being shipped from other countries in an effort to help with the energy crunch.

Bush said there was "good news" in that the Colonial Pipeline, a major artery, is being prepared faster than thought.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told Bush this morning that fuel is the number one need right now. Saying "we won't recover from this for a long time," Barbour said that search and rescue is being delayed by lack of fuel. "Fuel is a huge problem. We don't have it. Fuel is the number one crisis. You can't do search and rescue without it. You can't get water (pumps up and running."

At the Pentagon, Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the U.s. Army Corps of Engineers, attempted at a press conference to argue that the levees in New Orleans that broke and led to the disastrous flooding of the city had been built with the belief that there was only a five-tenths of one percent they would break.

Even though they were built for a Category 3 hurricane and Katrina was a Category 4, Strock said that the failure was not because the Army Corps' budget had been cut. He said the design study of flood control in New Orleans is still going on and that it will take years and a decision on what is acceptable risk before better levees can be built. "At the time these levees were designed and constructed, this level of protection was thought to be enough."

But the more immediate question in Washington is delivery of food and water to thousands of stranded people along the Gulf Coast.

At a press conference this morning, a number of black members of Congress said they were outraged that it took days to get food and water to thousands of black, poor, disabled and sick people who were not able to get out of New Orleans before it flooded despite the mandatory evacuation order last weekend. While some, including Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., complained that Bush had not shown adequate leadership, members of the Congressional Black Caucus stopped short of charging that racism was involved in the slowness of the response.

Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Ca., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said the task is just beginning and that much more money will have to come from Congress. He vowed, "Rebuild we must. Rebuild we will."