WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Clay Higgins (R-LA) and the entire Louisiana congressional delegation delivered a letter to President Biden today urging him to approve Louisiana’s request for emergency and long-term supplemental funding in response to Hurricane Ida, Laura, and Delta.
“The full extent of Louisiana’s damages have not yet been determined and will likely not be fully known until after immediate matters of public safety are addressed. Further, Hurricane Ida is not the only disaster to strike Louisiana in the past year,” wrote the Louisiana delegation. “In fact, a record breaking five named storms – Cristobal, Marco, Laura, Delta, and Zeta – hammered Louisiana within the past year resulting in dozens of lives lost and billions of dollars in damage. To date, communities across Southwest Louisiana such as Lake Charles, Lafayette, Leesville, and Alexandria, among others, still await desperately needed disaster funding from the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, to address unmet financial needs.”
“As such, we are writing you now to alert you to the need for Congress to provide emergency supplemental appropriations to address Hurricane Ida and the storms from last year, as was done following Hurricane Katrina. Without substantial and robust emergency appropriations from Congress to critical unmet need accounts like the CDBG-DR program, Louisiana families will continue to languish as a result of these devastating storms,” continued the Louisiana delegation.
Congressman Higgins issued the following statement:
“My office continues to push for supplemental funding, ease of access to existing funds, and immediate access to direct grant monies. We aren’t going to stop until every Louisiana citizen is fully recovered.”
Read the full letter here.
