Paul Tonko: “You know, I listen to you, and your State was tremendously impacted by Irene and Lee last summer. My State was…”

“You know, I listen to you, and your State was tremendously impacted by Irene and Lee last summer. My State was tremendously impacted. We reached for those very pots--that we've emptied with the Republican solution--that served our communities so very well with disaster funds. We can't tamper with some of those legitimate set- asides because they're there, they're required by acts of Mother Nature or by manmade situations where we need to have disaster dollars available. But you can't help but quantify. I mean, you just imagine the extrapolating out of jobs, the impact of jobs if you don't get this done, the ripple effect into those ancillary businesses that feed into the needs of agriculture. It is a tremendous opportunity for us to grow stability in the economy. And to not do this, this do-nothing Republican Congress is devastating the economy. We could have made major strides, we could have gone forward with a lot of attempts to do good. Now, what I sense here, from what you've talked about with these poison pills that have been adopted or placed into their solutions, or the ignoring of agreed-upon legislation in committee, this is a recurring theme. I mean, we saw the FAA, the Federal Aeronautics Administration, impacted again by delays, games that were being played because they need the full loaf or they want it their way. There is no sense of consensus that is driving these outcomes.…”