Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I want to commend the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis) and the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Bustos) for coming together to work in a bipartisan manner to address a problem that affects not just Illinois, but affects, I think, all 50 States. It is an issue where we have watched FEMA, in many cases, make decisions that appear to be arbitrary in terms of declaring a disaster in some areas, not in others. What this legislation does, very simply, is it requires that FEMA take into consideration the true localized impacts of a disaster. And in line with what the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis) noted earlier, we did an amendment in the committee that also looked at, or required, FEMA to consider multiple impacts in an area. I am from south Louisiana. In the last several months, we have had police shootings, we have had one of the most costly floods in U.S. history, we have had tornadoes, and we have had another flood in north Louisiana. In fact, there were two floods, as I recall. One of them was a 500-year flood, and the second was a 1,000-year flood. It makes me question how old I am sometimes. But what this does is it requires that FEMA look at localized impacts, and that they take into consideration the cumulative impacts of various disasters and incidents in an area.…”