We are providing ways to keep homeowners as homeowners. You can successfully rebuild South Louisiana with the package we have proposed.

Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air - moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh - felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing.

As bad as things are in south Louisiana right now, can you imagine how much worse they'd be without functioning local governments?

My guess is that neither the governor or the Legislature is going to start distributing funds until we have an extraordinarily high degree of confidence that the money is in the bank.

If the plan doesn't get fully funded, we're going to start from scratch.

What this information shows, I think, is this was the most expensive natural disaster in American history.