Political Quotes

“I wish to follow up on the comments made by my colleague from Louisiana, Senator Vitter. I am pleased he will accompany many of our elected officials to the FEMA office this afternoon. I had a chance to meet with the FEMA officials yesterday. At my request, they came to the Capitol to meet with me. We are both very hopeful that there are some things within the new mandates and new authorizations that FEMA can do to mitigate against the projected 25-percent increases annually for some of our policyholders--not the majority but for some of them. I am anticipating that some of these issues are not going to be addressed administratively and that it is going to take a change of law. Again, the reason I am pushing this issue and pushing this bill is because this new law that we are talking about, expressing frustration about, and questioning never came to this floor for a vote. I am still not clear at this point whether this bill was ever voted on by the full House. This bill, the flood insurance reform bill of last year, was tucked into a larger bill, the national transportation bill, at the last minute. The national transportation bill was widely supported. It funds billions of dollars' worth of projects for everyone's district. It is a very popular bill. This relatively small but significant flood insurance bill was tucked into a conference report, which is really not that usual, particularly if the bill itself had not passed one body.…”