Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1917, introduced and championed by Representative Fletcher. The Hazard Eligibility and Local Projects, or HELP Act, is designed to cut through red tape to unlock Federal assistance to State and local governments to complete some of the most basic mitigation projects more efficiently, such as buyouts of flood-prone properties. It represents a change to the current law's one-size-fits-all approach to reviewing projects that frequently delays mitigation work which will be welcome news to communities across my State in New Hampshire, and across our country as we deal with more frequent severe weather events that may require a Federal response. The National Institute of Building Sciences has conducted significant analysis on the return on investment to taxpayers for investments in mitigation. Congress, under both Democratic and Republican majorities, has seen fit to bolster investments in mitigation to drive down future disaster response and recovery costs. Just last week, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee marked up the Resilient AMERICA Act which would align the calculation used to fund the Federal Emergency Management Agency's pre-disaster mitigation program with the agency's post-disaster mitigation program. FEMA's longest-running mitigation program, the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, or HMGP, began in 1989 and provides assistance after a disaster has struck.…”