Political Quotes

“We have delayed this fix too long, and we need to go ahead and take care of it. I am going to stay on the floor this morning. I will periodically bring everyone up to date. I will close by reminding people what we are talking about. These are the new flood maps in the United States. The purple shows where it is in effect, green shows the proposed areas, and yellow shows the new flood map. There is not a State that is exempt from what I am speaking about. The amazing thing is to see this cluster in Pennsylvania, New York, and in Ohio. Everyone thinks about this as a Texas, Florida, or Louisiana issue. But when we see the inland States being affected by flood maps--States that have never been issued before are being issued without good data because FEMA doesn't have the science, technology, or resources to do this correctly yet. The affordability study has not even been done, and they didn't do it even though the last bill asked them to do it. We need to put this train back in the station. It is not ready for prime time. We need to bring it out in a way that, yes, rates may have to rise. No one is opposed to that. But rates have to rise in a way that people can afford them and can be notified. From our standpoint, Louisiana would like levees to be recognized. Since we spent billions of dollars of the taxpayers' money building them, we would like them to be recognized. If you are behind a levee, you don't have to pay $15,000 a year because you already paid for the levee.…”