Political Quotes

“In this time of extreme weather events, our hearts go out to victims of the storms, wildfires, power outages, torrential downpours, the winds, trees crashing into homes. It makes our hearts ache, thinking of the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people in sweltering heat without electricity. Beyond our shores, we see this extreme weather is global in scale, such as the flash floods that killed hundreds in Russia this last week. We must pause, shudder, and feel sadness for those families. For many, the instinct is to help people resettle, rebuild, and reconnect. But the Nation's elected leaders should do more than comfort those in distress and try to help people recover. As policymakers, shouldn't we act to try and prevent the next catastrophe? Some of this is relatively simple and straightforward, even if potentially controversial. Don't relocate people right back in the same flame or flood zone. We know they'll be ravaged by fire and flood. At a minimum, we shouldn't have the Federal Government pay to put people right back in harm's way. This discussion is part of flood insurance reform and national disaster policy that I personally have been working on for decades. We have made some progress, but not nearly what we should. You would think we would stop making it worse, yet we allow more and more people to move into the flame zone seeking to live with nature, and these people then expect government to prevent nature from doing what it's done for eons.…”