i m gonna just go back to doing what i was doing. find your awesome with the xfinity x1 voice remote. and we re signing a lot of documents now to get money. 7.9 billion. we signed it and now it s going through very quick, hopefully quick process. president trump today saying he s confident congress will approve nearly $8 billion to help the victims of harvey. that s only a small amount of what s needed and less than a tenth of what the nation spent after hurricane katrina. i want to bring in now npr reporter scott, a former staff for republican senator rand paul. thank you both for being here
national disasters. i can tell you whatever it would have cost to have retro fitted that chemical plant so it would not do you mean state and federal? yeah. i mean, look, this is definitely a nationwide program. certainly the flood insurance is. but yeah, absolutely infrastructure, does it come from state or federal. both for sure. our federal government definitely has to look at it. what happens is nobody says it s missouri s problem, texas s, new york s problem. the military is mobile ietsd. congress is asked to move. it s a national probable. so wouldn t we want to spend 50% of that earlier to avoid those major problems. can you imagine if we were able to cool that chemical plant down before it exploded, we would have saved a lot of money. so, you know, it s an important time for our nation to realize that good spending ahead of time will save us down the road. lip, do you agree with that in terms of who is going to pay for it? well, i think the argument doesn t work
has now pushed forward, yet many of their own elected officials, and if they were watching katrina as many louisianans certainly did do and have looked at other national disasters, the numbers that will be needed that many people are talking about here is over $100 billion. i was speaking with one representative, sheila jackson lee, obviously of houston, a represent ti of the district there saying we re looking at up to $200 billion. are they concerned there that congress will stay focused on getting them the money they need? i think for now people are concerned about their immediate situation. i think they feel grateful that there is some movement, that they are hearing from public officials and from the president that relief is on the way. yeah. but i think their scope right now, it sort of has to be shortsighted in the sense that they need to figure out where they re going to sleep tonight, what their kids are going to eat, and those primary concerns are certainly overriding t