Political Quotes

“Mr. President, first of all, I want to thank the Senator from Louisiana. I also want to point out, look at all those red lines. Those are the paths of hurricanes. Where do you think most of them were going between 1851 and 2008? And why are folks like us on the gulf coast and the Atlantic coast so sensitive about disaster money? It is because we have been hit over and over. Our lands we call paradise. But they happen to be, as the Senator from Louisiana said, in the middle of ``hurricane highway.'' It is a part of our lifestyle. When I was a kid, it was an excuse to get out of school. When I was a bachelor, it was an excuse to have a party. But now that I have the privilege of representing one of those very large gulf coast States and Atlantic coast States, it is absolute, utter destruction. When Hurricane Andrew hit Miami, had it turned one degree to the north, and instead drawn a bead on the Dade-Broward line in north Miami, it would have been a $50 billion insurance loss storm in 1992 dollars. That would have been upward of $80 billion today. It would have taken down every insurance company that was doing business in the path of that storm. This is the destructive power. Do our people need help? Of course they need help. ____________________”