Rob Andrews: “I thank my friend for yielding, and I thank the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and my friend for working…”

“I thank my friend for yielding, and I thank the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and my friend for working together to bring this product to the floor. I've heard two objections to this bill. The first is that money is spent in the wrong places, and the second is the amount of money altogether is too costly. Let me try to address those objections. As to the money being spent in the wrong places, I would respectfully request that Members who have that objection read the legislation because, throughout the legislation, when it refers to the money to be spent, it says that the moneys are to be spent on necessary funds related to the consequences of Hurricane Sandy. Now, there is one exception to this that I've read, and it is limited to situations in which there were prior disasters that are not yet cleaned up. So this is a bill that deals almost exclusively with the Sandy disaster, and to the extent it does not, it deals with lingering problems in other parts of the country from those disasters. To those who would argue that the amount of money in the bill is just too much to begin with, I would offer you this question: If you were running a business and had 100 manufacturing plants and sales offices around the country and 15 of them were shut down by a storm--so 15 percent of your available revenue was no longer available to you--what would you do?…”