Political Quotes

“Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to authorize a game-changing scale of investment in making America's infrastructure more resilient to natural disasters. The BUILD Resilience Act would build on the National Disaster Resilience Competition first authorized in the 2013 Hurricane Sandy emergency supplemental disaster package. It would authorize $1 billion a year over 5 years to jumpstart large-scale investment in community resilience--supporting jobs, strengthening infrastructure, and reducing risk to communities from disasters like hurricanes and flooding. This bill aims to follow the ``ounce of prevention'' principle. Cleaning up after a disaster is important, but if we invest in sturdier infrastructure before the disaster, there will be less to clean up after the disaster. This is borne out in two separate studies. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that every $1 invested upfront in resilient infrastructure saves $3 on the back end. The Multihazard Mitigation Council of the National Institute of Building Sciences estimates $4 of benefit. The Sandy Competition supported resilience projects in low-lying coastal areas of Virginia and Louisiana; in Sandy-affected areas of New York and New Jersey, in flood-prone Midwest regions like Iowa and North Dakota, and elsewhere. But Virginia's grant illustrates the scale of the challenge.…”