I thank the gentleman from Utah for yielding. Madam Chair, I was sitting in my office in a meeting and looked up at the TV screen on C-SPAN, and I watched our distinguished chairman put up a chart that said that for every $1 you invest in proactive predisaster mitigation, you get $6 in cost savings. I was somewhat shocked because I have used that statistic over and over again, and I have also used the statistic that the Congressional Budget Office has a study that says you get $3 in cost savings for every $1 you invest. The Corps of Engineers has a study that says you get $7.92 for every $1 you invest. The National Institutes for Building Standards says you get $11 in cost savings for every $1 you invest. You know what? Every single time I have tried to do this, my good friend has voted against me--every single time. This bill is designed to send out press releases. Let me be clear: Right now, we have well over $100 billion in resiliency projects that are needed across the Nation. Just last year, under a Republican Congress, we put tens of billions of dollars into funding those resiliency projects through the Corps of Engineers, through FEMA. So taking an existing program that manages our coastal resources and expanding the eligibility, expanding the uses of funding without adding new funds, all that is doing is further complicating the very mission that the majority is trying to achieve.…
On the recordDecember 10, 2019
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