total amount of money that s ultimately going to be needed to begin to rebuild. this will replenish the disaster relief fund, but then there will be a second and larger emergency appropriations bill to make sure we compensate all these homeowners, businesses, and we repair our flood control system in houston and then expand it. we have got to talk about what we do in southeast texas to protect the largest concentration of chemical refining capacity in the country from another major hurricane. if this had been a hurricane that come ashore with a monster storm surge, the damage to the refining infrastructure of the united states is hard to imagine. we ve got to prepare for that eventuality. arthel: and well, i m going to move on because i want to keep going here. who would you say, congressman, is that greater risk at this stage of the disaster? well, at this stage of the disaster, we have got fortunately blue skies the last couple of days.
recovery. i think the first thing that we need to do is make sure, and there s been a significant amount of efforts in place not just then frivolous money. congress traditionally grants a disaster relief fund. supplemental emergency appropriations. in hurricane andrew and all the way through today, most if not all have been granted. i believe congress will continue to do the right thing on a bipartisan basis to make sure the public assistance and individual assistance over the next four to five years gets in place. we have to build a critical infrastructure. electric, gas, water, sewer, transfer transportation infrastructure. and it s amazing to me because i think, people talk and
never failed to vote emergency appropriations for the aid of the beleaguered states, never. to ignore the plight of millions of american citizens, unprecedented, disgusting, unworthy of the leadership of this house. they should reconsider or they should hang their heads in shame. these republicans have no problem finding new york when they re out raising millions of dollars. anyone from new york or new jersey who contributes one penny to congressional republicans is out of their mind because what they did last night was put a knife in the back of new yorkers and new jerseyans. it was absolutely disgraceful. there is only one group to blame for the continued suffering of these victims. the house majority and their speaker, john boehner. we respond to innocent victims of natural disasters not as republicans or democrats, but as americans. or at least we did until last night. it was disappointing and disgusting to watch. this is one of the most sad
allowing the additional process when we have disaster aid, an emergency appropriations bill which appropriates the money without going through the regular budget process so it immediately goes out to the states and people in need. he has not indicated he s willing to do that and i think he s indicating just the opposite. that s not what we do. when we have a disaster, we don t hold the budget process hostage, if you will. we say we re going to do an emergency appropriation. we re going to get that money out right away and that s what we re going to demand, and the fact he does, may not be willing to go along with that is pretty tragic, given the need. here comes now the politics associated with the issue. the democratic congressional campaign committee that challenged 25 east coast republicans whose districts were hit by irene to stand with cantor or to publicly oppose him. an example. congressman scott rigell stand against the republican leader eric cantor s outrageous position that
governor s comments? he s pointing out this should bypass the regular budget process. i mean, keep in mind that under bush the republicans never asked that in an emergency that we not go ahead and bypass the regular budget process and have these offsets. also, the war. during the republican during the bush administration, afghanistan and iraq, they were all financed through emergency appropriations along with disaster aid. so the idea that we should wait around until the regular budget process and have offsets, we ve never done this before. we always you know, even in the case of the war, certainly in any disaster, we always said we re going to do an emergency appropriation, and that s been the precedent. so i think now what s happening is that cantor has gone along with the tea party agenda. which basically says there s no role for government. why do we have to do anything special in this case? and that s not what we do. we have to get this aid out to the people in need. christi