Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding and wish to engage the gentleman from Kentucky, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, in a colloquy. Before I ask the chairman my question, I want to recognize his efforts for reaching an agreement on a package to fund the government through December 9 and include interim aid to the August 2016 flood victims in south Louisiana. Early last month, the people of south Louisiana experienced an extraordinary flood event, about a 1,000-year rain event. To put it in perspective, 7 trillion gallons of water fell in about 48 hours. That is roughly the same amount of water discharged by the entire Mississippi River system into the Gulf of Mexico over the course of about 80 days. If you live up North, that equates to somewhere in the vicinity of about 25 feet of snow in 36 hours. If you live in Arizona, in some areas, that is up to 10 years of cumulative rainfall. As many as 110,000 homes and more than 100,000 vehicles were damaged. All told, more than 20,000 people were rescued, 10,000 sheltered, and 13 lost their lives. Early estimates predict that this disaster will cost upward of $15 billion in economic damages, and FEMA estimates this will be the fourth most costly flood disaster in U.S. history. Over the past several weeks, the gentleman from Kentucky and I have discussed the flood and the extraordinary impact on our State several times.…”