Deborah Koff Ross: “I thank Mr. Berry for offering this amendment. It is a bipartisan amendment. It is what I would call a commonsense…”

“I thank Mr. Berry for offering this amendment. It is a bipartisan amendment. It is what I would call a commonsense amendment. I don't have to tell you, Mr. Chairman, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, they need help in trying to figure this program out. This is the same Federal agency that has 8,000 brand new, fully furnished mobile homes sitting in a cow pasture in Hope, Arkansas several years after Hurricane Katrina, mobile homes that never got to the victims. And when we had a tornado on the Mississippi River in Dumas, Arkansas, it took FEMA 3 weeks to figure out how to move 30 of them 2 rac{1}{2} hours down the road, and now FEMA is trying to wreak havoc on our National Flood Insurance Program. The gentlewoman from Missouri is absolutely correct; it seems to me what FEMA is trying to do here is pay for their flood insurance program by forcing people to buy insurance who they know are never going to have a claim. This is a step in the right direction in trying to provide a commonsense fix to another mess that has been created by FEMA, and I am pleased to stand here with my colleagues from Arkansas and Missouri in support of it.”