Political Quotes

“I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot of talk about this program. We have heard a lot about affordability, folks talking about being fiscally conservative and making sure that this program is financially solvent, hearing numbers like $20 billion in debt. Mr. Speaker, let me give you another number: $1.5 trillion. $1.5 trillion, that is the amount of money we have spent on just 120 disasters since 1980, billion-dollar-plus disasters. If we are fiscally conservative, then we need to address the $1.5 trillion, not focus on this small component of disasters. How do you do that? You do that by making your communities more resilient. The Congressional Budget Office, FEMA, Corps of Engineers, and many other organizations have come out and said that the way that you do this is by being proactive and making investments in community resiliency, in ecosystem resiliency. That is what you do. If we are fiscal conservatives, if we are concerned about solvency and the debt, why are we just focused on this one small program? Mr. Speaker, here is the reality: Under the proposals that have been put forth, it charges people for things they have no responsibility over. That is called a tax. That is a tax. The people in my home State of Louisiana are at the bottom of one of the largest watersheds in the world. More water is being sent to us because of development in the Upper Mississippi River Basin.…”