Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to give an update from home. I represent south Louisiana. A few weeks ago, we had a rainfall event that has been categorized as a 1,000-year storm. Mr. Speaker, in some areas of south Louisiana we received 31 inches of rain. To put that in perspective, that would take 5 years for the city of Bakersfield, California, to achieve that number. That would take 10 years for the city of Yuma, Arizona, to receive that level of rain. For those Americans that haven't realized they can live in the pleasure of the subtropics and you live up north, to translate that to snowfall, that is the equivalent of a 25-foot snowstorm; a storm that leaves 25 feet of snow. This is categorized, again, as a 1,000-year event: 31 inches of rain in, in some cases, as short as perhaps 36 hours. Mr. Speaker, we have areas that have never, ever flooded, never seen water, never retained or held water in any way, shape, or form, that dealt with several feet of water in their homes and businesses. In Livingston Parish, Louisiana, it is estimated that 86 percent of the homes and 91 percent of the businesses were flooded. This has been a devastating event for many folks in our community. Mr. Speaker, as we move forward, certainly the Stafford Act, the Federal disaster law, has a role in helping our communities to recover. But what happened when this storm first came about and the flooding began is that it wasn't the Stafford Act or FEMA that came to the rescue.…”