Gene Taylor: “I recently heard the gentleman who represents Hollywood speaking about how it is somehow fair that the only Member of…”

“I recently heard the gentleman who represents Hollywood speaking about how it is somehow fair that the only Member of this body that I know of who was there on Ground Zero, who rode with the National Guard to distribute food because FEMA so thoroughly screwed up, who realizes that if it were not for the United States military doing FEMA's job for them, people would have starved to death, people would have died of dehydration, hospitals would not have gotten needed medical supplies, that I will not be allowed to subpoena witnesses. So as a Member of this body who was elected by as good a margin as anyone else here, I do object that I could not ask for a witness, that I could not subpoena a witness to deliver the message that needs to be delivered about the lessons learned in Mississippi. We do not need to make the same mistakes when the next hurricane hits. The bottom line is FEMA did make horrible mistakes that came very close to costing people their lives. FEMA could have avoided millions of dollars in unnecessary aerial replenishment of people that we could get trucks to, because they insisted on one point of delivery in a county where very few people still had cars that were running and those that had cars that ran could not get gasoline. FEMA could have sent thousands of people on their way to their families in other parts of the State, but did not bring gasoline in for them. There are a number of mistakes that we never need to make again as a Nation.…”