Mitch Landrieu: “one of the reasons I come to the floor this morning is to speak about an issue that I brought up on the floor, now many…”

“one of the reasons I come to the floor this morning is to speak about an issue that I brought up on the floor, now many times, and so has the other Senator from Louisiana and Members of our delegation, as well as Members from the Gulf Coast States that have been affected by Katrina, to try to see what we can do to get some aid to our States, directly into the hands of people who can actually put that money to good use, so we do not leave here this weekend without having done something very clearly and very specifically. Now, this Congress has acted with dispatch over the last 4 weeks to allocate and appropriate money to FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, that is tasked with the responsibility of managing disasters such as this when they are of such a magnitude it is really impossible for individual cities or individual counties or individual parishes or even regions to handle them. This storm was just that. It was a category 5 storm, with a surge of tide that had the highest recorded level at 29 feet of water--a tsunami basically of 30 feet, approximately--that slammed into the gulf coast about 32 days ago and devastated the energy coast of this Nation--or a large part of the energy coast. Assessments are being done by insurance companies, corporations, multinational companies, small companies, law enforcement, cities, parishes, and counties to try to get a handle on the damage, but it is staggering.…”