Roy Blunt: “we have been stuck for some time now on having an appropriations bill that meets the disasters that have occurred…”

“we have been stuck for some time now on having an appropriations bill that meets the disasters that have occurred recently in Missouri and, before that, in the Carolinas and Georgia, and other places. I want to continue to work hard to get that done, but I want to talk a little bit about the effects of what has happened in the State of Missouri as part of what has happened with floods this spring. We have seen catastrophic and, in some cases, historic flooding both on the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers over the last couple of months. Along the Missouri, there was this unusual thing, and I actually never heard the term before, a ``bomb cyclone.'' It is a wind event that also produced lots of rain in Nebraska in the Northern Plains on frozen ground. All of that water had no place to go except run off, and it was the equivalent of 8 inches of rain in a place from which we usually don't get water. There had been significant rain over the last few days of March. That created another flood. On the Mississippi, we have seen significant rains there. While they haven't set a record, they have certainly consistently ranked the Mississippi crests among the seventh highest flood levels that river has ever been from some of the locks. There are locks north of St. Louis. You can navigate the river without locks south of St.…”