Political Quotes

“I would like to address the gentleman's amendment really in the broader context of the Office of the Flood Insurance Advocate. This is creating it within this bill, and I think in my opening statements I addressed this issue. It's creating a new office. And at a time when we have rising debts and deficits, we are creating another bureaucracy, another obligation on the Federal taxpayer where I think that we could work within existing regulatory and administrative offices to try to accomplish the same thing. We had a discussion yesterday in the Rules Committee where the chairwoman of our subcommittee talked about the need for advocacy. And I don't oppose the need for helping people wind through the intricacies of FEMA, trying to make appeals, trying to find out when and how they're going to be paid or what their alternate living arrangements might be and all the things that an advocate can do in terms of winding through a large bureaucracy like FEMA. But FEMA has assured us that they have already a functioning appeals process, and on top of an Inspector General and continual GAO oversight of the NFIP program. So I think that the advocacy office itself is representing some duplicative and unnecessary bureaucracy and spending. So while I don't oppose the gentleman's amendment, if the advocacy office goes through, it's not really the substance of your amendment, it's really more the basis of the flood advocate itself, Office of the Flood Advocate itself.…”