Mike Enzi: “whenever there is a crisis the media has always served to focus the nation's attention on the problem and who has been…”

“whenever there is a crisis the media has always served to focus the nation's attention on the problem and who has been affected by it. Then it has been up to us, in the Congress, to review the problem and determine whether or not there was anything we could do to ease the suffering and repair the damage to someone's property and their livelihood. Most of the time, when the media spots a crisis it is of such a magnitude that the pictures we see of the suffering are devastating and powerful. The images clearly cry out to us to take action and do what we can to restore, as much as possible, the lives of these people to normalcy. We have all seen the pictures of the devastating tornadoes or other natural disasters that have wreaked havoc wherever they have touched. Story after story has appeared in print and on television showing property destroyed, places of business torn in pieces, jobs in jeopardy and lives forever changed by the fury of a few moments of severe weather. Tornadoes don't last a long time, but they leave a path of devastation in their wake that leaves those affected by it forever changed. Even as we consider the devastation of tornadoes, earthquakes, or other natural disasters, there are those in my state who have seen their livelihoods drastically affected by weather and federal regulation, but they haven't been so visible to us because we haven't seen their faces on the nightly news or read their stories in the national newspapers.…”