Jerry Lewis: “I appreciate my chairman yielding this time to me, and, Mr. Speaker, I currently have the privilege of being the…”

“I appreciate my chairman yielding this time to me, and, Mr. Speaker, I currently have the privilege of being the chairman of the subcommittee of appropriations that deals with the disaster relief part of this bill. Throughout my career I have made a very serious effort to attempt to, where I could, eliminate partisan vitriol from subjects that relate to our subcommittee, but specially in the area of disaster relief. When we recessed not so long ago, I was working in the conference dealing with this major bill. During that conference we had two or three items that were hanging up the bill, so we could not get the work done before that recess. Everybody but everybody knew there was enough money in the FEMA, that is the Federal Emergency Management Agency pipeline, to fund that which we could do in the very short term. There was some discussion of a slimmed-down version to make people feel good, but the facts were there was enough money to cover that 10-day period. Because of that, I was astonished, while working in my district, to hear the President of the United States using his weekly radio address to suggest that one way or another, the Congress had walked away from those disaster victims.”