Political Quotes

“I thank the gentlewoman for yielding, the chair of the Committee on Appropriations. I thank her for bringing this important legislation to the floor. It is the product of great, intense review of what is needed to go forward, and it is lean. There are many other suggestions that people have. This is what is urgent for us to do now. I thank the Committee on Appropriations, which is one of the committees of jurisdiction, having a series of hearings on the subject, all of the subcommittees of jurisdiction--I think there are six on there--and then even the Legislative Branch Committee, which has the most responsibility, had maybe seven hearings. In addition to that, let's start on that horrible day. Springing right from that, I called upon General Honore to review what has happened. I saw the work that he did in Katrina. That is how I got to know his work, and I knew that he would be an objective reviewer of what we needed. He put together a very blue ribbon committee of law enforcement and national security advisers--national security at the general level, generals in the military--and they put forth their recommendations of what we needed to do in the short term and in the long term. And many of those suggestions, in the short term, are in this legislation. There are those who say, well, we can't wait till we do the commission report--when they vote against the commission report--until we do this, like next year or the end of the year.…”