Political Quotes

“Thank you, Mr. Neugebauer, I appreciate the privilege to address this issue. And, Mr. Chairman, Katrina funding doesn't belong in this DOD emergency supplemental appropriations bill. We have had now 6 months to debate and discuss and deliberate on Katrina funding, and yet there is still not a plan. This Congress hasn't exerted its will on a plan in New Orleans, in particular, and yet here we have another wave of appropriations that has come in without an accounting of where the money has been spent. If we continue to do this, Mr. Chairman, we will continue to see more money go down there without a solution in place. And I would submit, and I have been down there three times, that if our Federal agencies function at 100 percent of optimum possible production, and with their hearts and their heads all in the right place, we still don't have a solution for Katrina. There is not a plan. There are appropriations that are in this. There is $100 million to restore the surrounding wetlands, yet we don't know how we are going to protect New Orleans for a category 3.1 storm or anything greater than that. We appropriated money before Christmas for the Corps of Engineers to produce a study to protect New Orleans for a cat 5 hurricane, but they have 24 months to produce the results of that study, and yet we don't know what kind of protection is going to be there for the capital that would go down in that region, some of it below sea level. If FEMA, SBA, and the U.S.…”