Political Quotes

“Hurricane Katrina was a terrible tragedy for the gulf coast. It was a terrible tragedy for New Orleans. In fact, it was the greatest tragedy that we have had as far as a natural disaster in the history of our country. As far as loss of property and loss of life, it is somewhere between five and six times greater than anything we had ever experienced before. When you talk property loss, uninsured property loss, because a lot of the flooding was in New Orleans where there was not flood insurance, or along the coast where they had wind insurance but not for the surge, the storm surge, the losses are even greater. But out of a tragedy, there ought to always be opportunities. And the opportunity that we have let slip by today, and, as I said, I am more concerned about the future, and I hope that the chairman of the full committee will work with me, is for us to go back and make sure that we do right by the people of New Orleans in public housing. The New Orleans public housing was a failure. It was dysfunctional, and it had been so for 40 or 50 years.”