Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in support of H.R. 1917, the Hazard Eligibility and Local Projects Act. As the gentleman from New Jersey just stated, this is a critical bill. It has already passed the House once. It passed out of the Transportation Committee by voice vote. I want to explain the scenario. In recent years, this Congress has provided record funding for mitigation projects, whether it be through the Corps of Engineers, the BRIC program through FEMA, or the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program that is based upon a formula of previous years disasters. What this legislation does is it really is a technical fix. In many cases, Mr. Speaker, it can take FEMA not weeks or months to approve a mitigation project, but years. It can take years. In many cases, Mr. Speaker, these projects are absolutely critical projects; they have great urgency behind them. We must have a project development and delivery process that reflects the urgency of the projects. This bill helps to fix that. What it does is it doesn't necessarily wait on Federal approval to allow for a project to be reimbursed to be an eligible project. I want to be clear, Mr. Speaker. This doesn't change the rules of eligibility. Meaning a county, a parish, a borough, a State could not move forward on a project doing something that ultimately is not approved and then get reimbursed. So the criteria for qualifying projects remains intact.…”