María Elvira Salazar: “at the outset, let me praise my colleague from North Dakota for his wisdom and his leadership in addressing an issue…”

“at the outset, let me praise my colleague from North Dakota for his wisdom and his leadership in addressing an issue this Nation has forgotten for too long a time; that is, the notion of fiscal responsibility and the fact that the United States of America today finds itself in a fiscal ditch. How we address the fiscal challenges of our future will largely depend on his leadership and the leadership of our colleagues in the Senate to make sure the legacy we pass on to our children is not a legacy of debt that will hang around their necks for generations to come. I appreciate the leadership of Senator Conrad from North Dakota. Last week I stood before the Senate and said that Congress needed to take a three-pronged approach to responding to the devastation brought to this Nation by Hurricane Katrina. That three-pronged response, from my perspective, required us to do as much as we could to save lives and make sure we were responsive to the victims of Hurricane Katrina; second, we needed to move forward with a Gulf Coast recovery plan to help that part of our Nation recover; and finally, we needed to move forward to address the lessons to be learned from this horrific devastation of a great part of our Nation. On the first step, this Congress has taken steps in rushing billions of dollars in emergency funding to the Gulf Coast. That funding should help the victims of Katrina begin their long road to recovery.…”