Charlie Melancon: “after a week and a half of difficult days, today is one of the toughest for me. This morning I had to leave the…”

“after a week and a half of difficult days, today is one of the toughest for me. This morning I had to leave the devastation and overwhelming need of the people that were affected by Katrina to come to the House to do my duty as a Member of Congress, to see that they are taken care of in the near term and in the long term. I hope we can bring some real help to Louisiana and the gulf region. First, we can make a difference in the form of today's supplemental appropriations to provide immediate relief for all that have suffered directly in this tragedy. Second, we can commit today that the problems that plagued the Katrina response will never happen again in future disasters. Beginning today, we can start a tough and honest assessment of our emergency response capability and how we deal with disasters like Katrina. With new legislation I have introduced, I am calling for creation of the Katrina Commission, an independent and bipartisan commission that will cut through the partisan finger-pointing and give us some real answers. We all need answers, Mr. Speaker. Louisianans, and my district in particular, need answers to what went wrong; and the rest of America needs answers to how we are going to better be prepared in the future in the case disaster hits them. We need to know why, when New Orleans was a nightmare, we sat and watched instead of helping the places we could help.…”