Mary Landrieu

Thank you for being willing to serve. It's a very important job that the President has nominated you for.

President Obama signed the Executive order creating the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force on December 7, 2012.

And you can also, for new building, we have a lot of slabs that were built that should not have been built, but they were.

I am going to commit right now to have a hearing in a short period of time.

So your annual budget is $82 million, and you have $291 million in damage.

We have a $40 billion backlog--$40 billion--of which your project was one of those backlogs.

I could spend $1.6 billion in Louisiana alone on actual Army Corps of Engineers projects that must be done to mitigate against storms and disaster.

Thirteen years ago, there was a project for $89 million that was authorized. Had it been funded, you would have saved yourself at least a portion or maybe all of the $160 million you have now requested to finish it.

The Federal Government has $1.6 billion for the entire country for new construction for the Army Corps of Engineers.

The last thing I want to see in America is that the only people who can live within a few blocks of the beach are people who have net worth of $20 million or more.

I will continue to push them, because this is just not fair.

$300 a night when you could add that money up and put it to the rebuilding of their home in a smarter way.

Why would we spend $50,000 for a hotel bill for this family? What if you took that $50,000 and put it with the insurance they had?

With help from all levels of government, Long Beach will rebuild stronger, smarter, and safer.

If the Congress nickels and dimes FEMA, as it has a tendency to do... they end up having to slow down recovery all over the country.

Let me call the meeting adjourned.

I will commit that we will be doing a meeting in Washington with your delegation through my subcommittee on this.

Well, the Congress can mandate them to do so. I will be very interested in doing that.

I am going to put them on notice today.

We can do a lot better with fewer, clearer and more efficient programs which would enable families to get back into better, safer homes faster and more easily.

The Congress, as you know, provided $11.5 billion in needed FEMA funding for response and recovery for Hurricane Sandy and other ongoing disasters.

We will get it for you. Don't worry.

I want to underscore that, under the law, when FEMA's bucket gets low, the only thing they can do is stop ongoing recovery.

Is it true that a sequester of $1 billion could result in FEMA having to shut down some disaster rebuilding processes or other disasters as early as August?

Smarter designs, better materials can withstand some of these storms up to 150, sometimes 200-mile-an-hour winds.