Political Quotes

“Buried in today's disaster supplemental spending bill is a $16 billion taxpayer bailout of the National Flood Insurance Program. That is nearly half the cost of this bill. This bailout does not come with a single reform that would put the program on the path to sustainability. This taxpayer bailout maintains a program that has resulted in taxpayer-subsidized development and reconstruction of homes that repeatedly flood. Madam Speaker, why are we not reforming this program that puts residents and first responders in harm's way? How much more debt are we willing to let this program pile onto the next generation? Americans in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands need help, and I would have liked to vote for the relief portion of today's legislation, but the multibillion-dollar taxpayer bailout of an unreformed program made the bill unacceptable. I urge my colleagues to reconsider the path we are on. We could have had a bill that not only provided relief to hurricane victims, but would have provided relief for taxpayers and the next generation as well, but we did not. We will get another chance for fiscal sanity in December, when we reconsider the additional disaster funding and funding for the rest of 2018. Let's hope we make better progress at that time. ____________________”