Political Quotes

“Here is what we are doing. There are those who believe if you have any kind of a dike, dam or levee, that you should not have to pay for flood insurance. We cannot tolerate that in a sense. We have 130 dams, levees, and dikes that are at great risk of one kind or another in these residual risk areas. About 25 percent all the claims against the flood insurance program come out of these residual risk areas, not the coastline. Clearly, having dikes, levees, and dams help. The fact is, the reason there is a dike, levee or dam is because it is in a residual risk area. Anything made by man or nature, there is no guarantee in perpetuity it is going to survive, even the 250 years about which we talked. What better example than Louisiana. We spent millions of dollars on a system down there that didn't work, ultimately. The idea of having someone pay a maximum of $350,000 worth of insurance--actually, the average cost is $316 a year.”