Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise), who represents the neighboring district from me in part of the metropolitan area of New Orleans. Let me just start off by saying something about New Orleans and the people of New Orleans. Now, the people of New Orleans are a very, very resilient people, and it started from the beginning of the history of New Orleans up until today. We started off--you can go back to 1788, when there was a fire in New Orleans that burned 856 of the 1,100 buildings that made up New Orleans. So that was 80 percent of the city burned. Then 6 years later another 212 buildings burned. But the good thing about the people of New Orleans is that we always pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and continue to do the work to rebuild and make a better life. Then you can go to 1853, when we had a yellow fever outbreak and epidemic. In 1853, almost 8,000 people died of yellow fever. And if you look at the time between 1853 and 1905, 41,000 people in the city of New Orleans lost their lives due to yellow fever. But again the city picked itself up, dusted itself off, and worked to make a better New Orleans. Then fast-forward to 1965. That was the year that Hurricane Betsy devastated the city of New Orleans. That was the first storm to rack up a cost of $1 billion in damage. And then, of course, I will talk about Hurricanes Katrina and Rita that hit New Orleans and devastated the entire Gulf Coast, but significantly damaged New Orleans.…”