David Obey: “Mr. Speaker, I think the public has a right to ask the Congress why it sometimes ignores the obvious. This bill today…”

“Mr. Speaker, I think the public has a right to ask the Congress why it sometimes ignores the obvious. This bill today, despite all of the good words said about it, in one respect ignores the obvious. When we passed the conference report on the supplemental, I said I did not believe that it provided sufficient funds for disaster relief, since we knew that Hurricane Isabel was then about to arrive. Well, as we now know, it arrived; and now we know the extent of the damage of Isabel, even though we do not know the precise costs. Mr. Speaker, 34 people lost their lives; flooding and wind damage was widespread. Many people in the hundreds of thousands still do not have electricity. FEMA tells us that a back-of-the-envelope estimate of the cost of Isabel is about 700 million bucks, the cost of Hurricane Fran and Floyd. Yesterday, the Richmond Times Dispatch reported that one official said, 'Too many times Federal, State, and local officials have acted or reacted on the basis of poor information, while FEMA is worried about keeping the headlines down rather than fixing the situation.'”