Mitch Landrieu: “as we all know, there was a tremendous amount of criticism of the Federal Government's response to Hurricanes Katrina…”

“as we all know, there was a tremendous amount of criticism of the Federal Government's response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year. Things are better now and the region is slowly recovering. But we are in the second month of another hurricane season and we must be sure that if we have another disaster, the Federal Government's response will be better this time around. Disaster response agencies have to be better organized, more efficient, and more responsive in order to avoid the problems, the delays, mismanagement, and the seeming incompetence that occurred last year. Today, I am introducing legislation to improve the disaster response of one agency that had a great deal of problems last year, the Small Business Administration, SBA. While it did improve during the course of the months after the storm, it became clear to me that SBA needs additional tools for future disasters. SBA approached Katrina and the massive floods after the storm, using the same tools that it uses for much smaller, much less damaging disasters. I do not blame all of the people who work at this agency for the problems we saw in the gulf. They found themselves in a system that was insufficient to address this disaster. My legislation, the Small Business Disaster Recovery Assistance Improvements Act of 2006, offers new tools to enhance SBA's disaster assistance programs.…”