Kevin Brady: “our community in Houston has been devastated by Tropical Storm Allison. As disheartening as that is, the only thing more…”

“our community in Houston has been devastated by Tropical Storm Allison. As disheartening as that is, the only thing more disheartening is to hear the demagoguery about it on this floor today. My colleagues in Congress who are using scare tactics to needlessly heap even more misery on to the families and businesses harmed by Allison ought to be ashamed of themselves. I too have a letter. It is from FEMA, not from politicians, and it says, ``FEMA's disaster account has sufficient funding to ensure disaster aid to those victims of Tropical Storm Allison flooding. FEMA assures those in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida fighting to recover now that FEMA stands ready and is able to help them.'' The fact of the matter is that over the next 3 months, we cannot spend the $1.5 billion FEMA has. The fact of the matter is that our accounts will be about a billion and a half dollars for that, like Tropical Storm Floyd has done and, the fact of the matter is, even if it is a little more, in the last 5 years, Congress has allocated $17 billion to help communities recover.”