Political Quotes

“Since 1980, we have had about 220 disasters that have caused over $1 billion in damages. In fact, when you add all that money up, we have spent about $1.5 trillion in disaster recovery, nearly all of that being emergency spending, adding to our deficit. Now, the thing that we do here in the Federal Government to help bring an offense to the table, to help address resiliency, is largely the mission of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: projects for flood protection, for water management, for ecosystem restoration that can help improve the resiliency of our communities, hurricane protection in my home State of Louisiana. Yet we have a $100 billion backlog in Corps of Engineer projects across the United States. This Congress provides between $1 billion and $2 billion a year in construction. Madam Chair, you can do the math. You have $100 billion in authorized projects. You get $1 billion to $2 billion a year in construction, you will finish that backlog approximately never. You are not going to finish it. And so what we did in the Disaster Recovery and Reform Act in October, that was signed into law in October and passed through this body three times, is we did a provision that says that FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Grant Program funds can be used to build a Corps of Engineers' project if your State, if your community determines that is the highest priority.…”