Political Quotes

“This is another good government amendment. One of the things that has happened since FEMA was set up is that what has occurred has created a disparity between the States. Let me outline, in the last 6 years the State with the most disasters--most of you would not realize--is Oklahoma. We have had 25 certified disasters in my State. Now, how did that happen? It has happened because the per capita damage calculation has not been updated through inflation on a regular basis. So what is the effect of that? The effect of that is a State such as New York or California or Texas can have exactly the same disaster as Oklahoma, but it will not be declared a disaster because Oklahoma has less than 4 million people but we have X amount of dollars, but because we have such a smaller population, we qualify for a disaster declaration, whereas if the same thing happened in any of those three larger populated States, they would not qualify. So this is actually an amendment that will not be beneficial to my State but is beneficial to us as American citizens to create equality in how we describe and how we grant disaster declarations. So all I am doing is saying that between now and 2016, FEMA has to update. It will not have any application to what we are doing today, but it is a good-government amendment so that we will actually have a uniform process throughout the country so that disaster declarations are appropriately granted to States that appropriately need the Federal Government's help.…”