Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, as I prepare to leave office at the end of this Congress, one of my greatest disappointments has been an inability to make progress dealing with our flood insurance system and the dangerous pattern of development and infrastructure. What is so frustrating to me is that the handwriting has been on the wall. Even though I have tried to sound the alarm, we really have precious little to show for it. I was on national TV 2 weeks before Hurricane Katrina, sketching in very vivid terms what was going to happen to New Orleans when the big one hit. Sadly, that was true even though Katrina wasn't the big one, but it could have been much, much worse. The devastation was unimaginable, and our efforts at recovery were woefully inadequate, inefficient, and unfair. We keep having to learn the same lessons with new victims in new disasters. This inspired my first major piece of legislation, which aimed to reform the flood insurance program. However, looking back, it was simply inadequate. We tried to provide incentives which simply weren't strong enough. There are all sorts of examples. Houston has been a poster child for repetitive flood loss. I used an example of one home flooded 22 times over 35 years and received more than $1.8 million in flood insurance claims for a home worth a fraction of that amount. While we labored mightily through the legislative process to make modest gains in the flood insurance program, it was too little and too late.…”