Norvell Emerson: “it pains me to have to rise and speak against the amendment of my dear friend, the gentleman from New York [Mr.…”

“it pains me to have to rise and speak against the amendment of my dear friend, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Boehlert]. Mr. Chairman, it will not help my district in Missouri, and I realize that that sounds a little bit selfish, but the fact is that my job here is to protect the folks back home, and that is what I need to do. Let me explain by telling the Members about a couple of situations in my district. We have a small town called East Prairie, where the integrity of its levees are greatly threatened. This is a poor town and it is very prone to flooding every year. Because of this, there are a lot of folks who live on welfare in East Prairie because no companies want to come to East Prairie and locate because they keep getting flooded out. So we have no jobs. We have lots of welfare recipients and we do not have any prospects for getting new jobs until our levees can be fixed and we can get two pumping stations to help keep those levees strong and maintain them. I need to know what I can tell the folks in East Prairie, MO, who desperately want to find work.”