Jeff Flake: “I assure my colleagues I won't take my entire 15 minutes, but let me point out this chart right here. These are areas…”

“I assure my colleagues I won't take my entire 15 minutes, but let me point out this chart right here. These are areas that have received disaster payments in 11 of the past 21 years. When you think disaster payments, you think this is something that happens once every decade or once every century or something that is an odd occurrence. It doesn't always occur. Yet here we see, look at these dots here. One, you can tell they're highly concentrated. Certain areas keep going back for more again and again and again. These areas where you see the dots received disaster payments 11 out of the last 21 years. One dot equals one recipient here. Now 11 out of the past 21 years, if you do the math right, that's better than once every 2 years people are coming back for disaster payments, catastrophic losses of some type or another. So the notion that we're taking care of it all, that we won't have any more catastrophic disasters, I think is blown away by this chart because we see again and again. Another thing that's quite notable with this chart is you see there is a very political disbursement here. I will point out one place, right here at the top of Arkansas. You will see a smattering of dots where this represents, believe me, millions and millions and millions of taxpayer dollars going to disaster relief. But something funny happens here. Once you cross the State line into Missouri, virtually no dots at all. Very little was received at all.”