Lynn A. Westmoreland: “I have called this Congress the smoke-and-mirrors Congress because of the way the majority party has presented their…”

“I have called this Congress the smoke-and-mirrors Congress because of the way the majority party has presented their case to the public, and it has been a process of smoke and mirrors. This seems to be a fuzzy math program. If you have 7,000 section 8 homes in New Orleans, and it's funny, we haven't heard from the people in Mississippi or Florida or some of the other places. This is specifically for the New Orleans housing. Seven thousand section 8 homes. Only 5,000 of them were occupied before the hurricane, and now we are wanting to put all 7,000 back. Yet in New Orleans today, there are 500 that is uninhabited that they can't get people to come back to. So somewhere there is a need to help people that don't seem to be taking that first step to helping themselves. We have people from New Orleans in Atlanta and in a lot of places in Georgia. If they want to go back to New Orleans, I am sure that we want them to be back in their hometown, and that probably the Federal Government would give them some assistance to get back to New Orleans and to know that there are 500 vacant section 8 houses for them to go to. I think the other interesting thing is that if you were in a section 8 house prior to Hurricane Katrina, and Hurricane Katrina destroyed your home that you were living in under the section 8 program, then you would now be entitled to section 8 for the rest of your life.”