Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, beginning around August 11, we had a 1,000-year flood event. This flood event was approximately 7 trillion gallons of water. It dropped 31 inches of rain in some of the peak areas that is the national average annual rainfall. We received it in about 36 hours in some of the peak areas. Again, to translate this for my Yankee friends, if this were snow, this would have been about 25 feet of snow. So, really, just an extraordinary event. Mr. Chairman, what has happened is that there were projects that date back to the 1970s and the 1980s that provided for flood protection for this region. We had 13 people who died. We have over 100,000 homes that were flooded. Areas like the Comite Basin and the Amite Basin are priority areas. I want to say it again. These are areas that have projects that have been authorized by Congress previously in the 1970s, the 1980s, and I believe even the 1990s, yet projects that have been moving at a snail's pace. So what this amendment does is it simply expedites the delivery of these projects. Mr. Chairman, this is critical. Let me explain why. Right now, you have communities like Denham Springs where FEMA just came out and determined that 45 percent of the homes in that town are significantly flooded with significant damage.…”