Louise Slaughter: “the vitally important bill before us today will help to begin the process of rebuilding one of our Nation's greatest…”

“the vitally important bill before us today will help to begin the process of rebuilding one of our Nation's greatest regions and the lives of the people within it. It comes to us in the wake of what was last week nothing short of a catastrophic failure of responsible and competent governance. And not surprisingly, the way in which we are going about passing this bill is itself a tremendous failure, the most recent in a seemingly endless line. It is a failure, Mr. Speaker, because almost no time has been provided for discussion of this bill and because no amendments have been permitted to be introduced. This body is about to spend more than $50 billion and all the minority wants is to spend it wisely. All we want is to give the Members a chance to know where the appropriations are going and to actually give Representatives from the affected States a chance to make suggestions to the legislation before it becomes law. We want to ensure that that this body will address as quickly as possible the tremendous errors which have been made by our Federal Government in its response to Hurricane Katrina. Last night in the Rules Committee we implored the majority to allow even a mere 2 hours of debate and to allow Members to offer amendments which would make this a better, more effective bill. Their response? Sorry, America, we don't have time for that. We don't have time?…”