Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the rule and equally strong support of the underlying legislation, particularly the Frelinghuysen amendment, which is so vital to the people of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and especially my area on Long Island in Nassau County and Suffolk County. To put this in perspective, there were 305,000 homes in New York damaged, 2.2 million people lost their power. That's more than the population of 15 States. That's 2.2 million people that lost their power. In Nassau County and Suffolk County, 95,000 buildings were damaged. More than 38,000 had more than 50 percent damage. In Nassau County--and the county executive, Ed Mangano, is here today--they had more than $6 billion in recovery costs. That's $6.1 billion for one county. In Suffolk County, under County Executive Steve Bellone, there were $1.8 billion in recovery costs. These are two adjoining suburban counties with almost $8 billion in recovery costs. I was here in 2005 for Katrina. In fact, I had become chairman of the Homeland Security Committee just several weeks after Katrina. Within days of being chairman, I went to Louisiana with Ranking Member Thompson and to Mississippi. Congressman Reichert was with me, as well. That was less than 3 weeks after Katrina. Ten days before that, the House of Representatives had passed two appropriations bills totaling $63 billion.…”