Garret Graves

This is a flood disaster that is going to have repercussions around the country.

The performance I've seen here is one of the worst, unfortunately, one of the worst I've ever seen.

You can actually manage these things, and they can co-exist.

There is this belief that you cannot have proper management of fisheries without a marine monument designation or a sanctuaries designation. That is not the case.

Sustainability of fisheries is a critical priority to me.

When you add up the offshore production in Federal waters for Alaska, California, Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama and you multiply it times about three or four, that is how much offshore production you have in Louisiana.

Because I know cases where you have certain populations of species that actually become explosive, to the detriment of other species.

The Federal Government has not stuck a shovel in the ground.

This isn't a partisan issue, this isn't--this is something that all of us need to be working very closely together on.

The primary cause of this wetlands loss in the State of Louisiana is actually the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Never did I think that a Republican President would be the one to stand up at an inaugural address and use the word 'infrastructure,' but it happened.

The commitment to work toward additional recovery dollars and assistance is the difference between a viable recovery and a decades-long struggling effort in south Louisiana, and I want to thank Chairman Rogers for his commitment.

I have an amendment at the desk. The Acting CHAIR. The Clerk will designate the amendment. The text of the amendment is as follows: At the end of title I, add the following: SEC. ___. FLOOD MITIGATION AND RIVERINE RESTORATION PROGRAM. The…

But doesn't that seem a little bit strange, that you would blame Keystone XL Pipeline on greenhouse gas emissions, yet for the Iran nuclear agreement you have the fourth-largest reserves of the world--if I recall correctly--of oil…

Part of the justification for rejecting the pipeline was because there was a greenhouse gas analysis that was done to determine it was going to contribute to emissions of greenhouse gas.

If I destroyed something, you would come after me. And if I destroyed wetlands, you know who would come after me? The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, yet they are the greatest cause of loss to coastal wetlands in the Nation.

The greatest cause of land loss in coastal Louisiana is the Federal Government, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Yet the Administration is effectively doing nothing but throwing up roadblocks in our efforts to actually restore wetlands.

Coastal Louisiana has lost about 1,900 square miles of wetlands and some of the most productive ecosystem on this entire continent.

We've got to work to get it right.

I think it's ridiculous. This is why people get so frustrated and why there are T-shirts that use an alternative acronym for 'FEMA' on Bourbon Street.

If you can save money--if you can save money, provide a more stable, preferable environment for the law enforcement community, why would you not do that?

But let's be clear. I don't want you to pull the Governor and his staff into this thing. This is not their decision. This decision is FEMA's decision.

What we're saying is we want to mitigate in a very smart way, which is, if we do our Comite project and other things, we will manage the water that we receive so that even a thousand-year storm we can survive.

But then we've got to make sure that our response from Washington is targeted on responding to this storm in the most effective way, learning from other mistakes.