Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from Utah for yielding, and I particularly appreciate it, given the subject matter I'm about to bring up. Madam Speaker, I had introduced legislation months ago in this Congress, in fact, as far back as last August, H.R. 2942. It's the result of the massive flooding that we have suffered in the Missouri River bottom last summer. The Corps of Engineers released unprecedented discharges of water coming down the Missouri River; 70,000 cubic feet per second was the previous high. We went through 160,000 cubic feet per second. It was a secret flood. No one could drive there, and no one could boat there. You had to fly over it to see it, and it was water that was perhaps a mile and a half wide downstream from Sioux City, Iowa, to just a few miles south of there, 8 miles wide at Blencoe, 11 miles wide upstream of Omaha. And south of Omaha downstream below Glenwood, it became 4 to 6 miles wide all the way down into Missouri, St. Joseph, Kansas City, and on about halfway towards St. Louis. This was a massive flood of historic proportions. It could have been prevented; yet I have not challenged the Corps of Engineers on that. I've just said to them we need to fix the problem so it doesn't happen again. They have declared that this was a 500-year event, even though the USGS statistician said it is somewhere between a 70- and a 1,000- year event. H.R. 2942 enjoys the support of almost everyone that represents the Missouri River watershed area.…”