[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 22992-22993]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




     CALLING FOR INDEPENDENT COMMISSION REGARDING HURRICANE KATRINA

  (Mr. COSTA asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. COSTA. Mr. Speaker, Americans were shocked by our government's 
response to Hurricane Katrina. They watched as days passed before the 
people of the gulf coast communities were

[[Page 22993]]

rescued. Americans rightly wondered, given this poor response to a 
natural disaster, is our government ready to respond to a terrorist 
attack?
  Americans now deserve the answers, and I believe those answers can 
best come from an independent commission to both identify what went 
wrong but, more importantly, to find solutions so that this failed 
response never happens again.
  Mr. Speaker, this Congress shares with the current administration a 
weak reputation for oversight. We need only to look back a couple of 
years to be reminded that it was not Congress nor the White House who 
demanded an appropriate oversight of 9/11 attacks. Members on the 9/11 
Commission have acknowledged it was the families of those lost in the 
attacks that came to Washington and demanded a thorough review of what 
went wrong.

                              {time}  1215

  Mr. Speaker, do we intend to wait for the people of Mississippi, 
Louisiana and Texas to march to the Capitol and demand that their 
administration and their Congress do the right thing and create an 
independent commission to find out truly how we can best respond in the 
future?

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