WASHINGTON - Americans are losing confidence that the federal government will wisely spend billions of dollars set aside for recovery from Hurricane Katrina, an AP-Ipsos poll found.

Just three weeks ago, the public was evenly split on whether the money would be spent wisely, according to the poll. Now, six in 10 say they are not confident the money will be well spent.

Federal officials were left red-faced after scuttling a debit-card plan almost as soon as they announced it, few hurricane victims moved into cruise ships leased off the Gulf Coast at considerable cost and Congress pushed to reverse many no-bid government contracts.

The negative publicity appears to have had an impact on public opinion.

”They're doing a bad job with the money,“ said Larry Washington, of Bonham, Texas, who complained about companies from outside the region getting rich, noncompetitive contracts to build mobile shelters at the expense of local businesses.

”I guess they just want to make the corporations rich,“ he said. ”They're doing it for their buddies.“

Since the initial, much-criticized federal government response to Katrina, Congress has appropriated $62 billion for hurricane recovery. The Congressional Budget Office says the final tab likely will be less than $150 billion - below initial estimates.

Most people have no problem with the expected cost.

Almost half of those surveyed in the AP-Ipsos poll said the government is spending the right amount while two in 10 said the more should be spent.

Public concerns tend to arise over whether the money will be spent well.

Government efforts to deal quickly with the crisis brought problems - from a short-lived program to give hurricane victims $2,000 debit cards to a six-month lease for three Carnival Cruise ships that cost $236 million and aren't being used by most hurricane victims.

Millions of dollars in contracts also were awarded without competitive bidding, prompting protests by members of Congress.

R. David Paulison, acting chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, promised Thursday that millions of dollars worth of no-bid contracts will be rebid to prevent waste or abuse.

Thousands were stranded in New Orleans for days after Katrina struck the Gulf coast in late August. And three weeks later, thousands were trapped in 100 miles of bumper-to-bumper traffic on the highway headed north into Texas as Hurricane Rita approached.

Those two difficult experiences with hurricane evacuation have raised public anxiety about government's ability to evacuate people in case of a major disaster. People are evenly divided on whether the government can do that, the poll found.

The most difficult job for government in storm evacuations is moving the old, the infirm and people without their own transportation, said Jane Bullock, who was FEMA's chief of staff under President Clinton.

She said the problems with the Katrina evacuation were caused by government officials at all levels not recognizing the size of the job facing them.

”The federal government didn't bring in assets to help with the evacuation and there wasn't enough time,“ Bullock said.

After seeing the traffic jam in Texas, David McLaurin, of Charleston, S.C., said he has doubts about government's ability to handle evacuations. The Texas jam came six years after similar jams in South Carolina during a massive evacuation for Hurricane Floyd.

In the poll, people were evenly split over whether they have prepared personal evacuation plans, but McLaurin said he considers it essential to have one, especially living in a city frequently threatened by hurricanes.

”I'm head of my family. The government's not head of my family,“ McLaurin said.

The poll of 1,000 adults was conducted by Ipsos, an international polling company, from Monday to Wednesday and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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AP manager of news surveys Trevor Tompson and Associated Press writer Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

Ipsos: http://www.ap-ipsosresults.com