Ted Cruz: “I rise today to recognize the first anniversary of Hurricane Harvey's destruction along the Texas gulf coast. This…”

“I rise today to recognize the first anniversary of Hurricane Harvey's destruction along the Texas gulf coast. This Saturday, August 25, marks 1 year since the most destructive storm in Texas history made landfall. Hurricane Harvey is now considered the second most costly hurricane in U.S. history, second only to Hurricane Katrina, but more importantly and more tragically, Hurricane Harvey took many, many precious lives. Harvey started out as a category 4 storm hitting South Texas, making landfall at Corpus Christi, Victoria, Port Aransas, Rockport, Aransas Pass, and Refugio, doing devastating damages with 135-mile-an-hour winds. It took down powerlines. It stopped fresh water. It clogged sewage systems. It devastated people's homes and people's businesses. I visited each of those communities many, many times in the weeks and months that followed Hurricane Harvey, and I have seen the transition those communities have undergone in dealing with the disaster and then rebuilding. But Harvey wasn't done after making landfall. Then, it moved north and east, parking over the city of Houston and just sitting there. Over a 6-day period, Harvey dumped 27 trillion gallons of rain over Texas and Louisiana, causing historic flooding--flooding that is not a 100- year flood, not a 500-year flood, but a 1,000-year flood. In southeastern Texas, Hurricane Harvey dropped rainfall of more than 60 inches, which exceeds the annual rainfall on average for that region.…”