WASHINGTON — The Gulf Coast should not aspire to get back to normal after this summer’s massive oil spill and Hurricane Katrina, panelists said Tuesday during a roundtable discussion about the area’s future.

“A lot of the rhetoric, the political grandstanding, that we hear in public is this notion of business as usual, let’s get things back to usual,” said Andy Brack, president of the Center for a Better South.

“What I would suggest to policymakers is that people in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle have been poor for a hell of a long time,” Brack continued. “Going back to poor is not a smart thing to do.”