11:53 AM CST on Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Tom Planchet

Blanco’s Opening Statement: Blog goes from start of testimony, latest comments are at the bottom

Blanco: I have sent over 100,000 documents supporting the state’s actions. I chose not to take executive privilege.

Blanco: Did hurricane Katrina overwhelm our local resources. You bet.

Blanco: There are many lessons to be learned, but we need your help. The economic security of our country is at stake.

Blanco: After World War II, our decision to rebuild Europe was courageous and farsighted. We will be well served to do that here as well.

Blanco: I invite all members of Congress to tour the devastation and see what Katrina and Rita have done.

Blanco: We have rebounded from these storms for generations. What happened to us this year can only be described as a catastrophe of Biblical proportions.

Blanco: We would not be here today if the levees had not failed.

Blanco: People from all backgrounds were devastated. Rich and poor, black and white, Republican and Democrat.

Blanco: We will look back at our response, but none of this negates the responsibility of Congress to help those who have been hurt.

Blanco: Focus on five priorities: 1-Strengthen the levees and rebuild the wetlands, 2- restore housing, 3- tax incentives for business and families, 4- taking care of health care needs and 5- providing educational help for our students who have been impacted.

Blanco: Asks for a fair share of our offshore oil producing revenues.

Blanco tells Congress that it must take care of levees as it does dams and other water protection areas in the country.

Blanco: I ask you to appropriate block grant funding, just as you did in New York after 9-11. Louisiana needs at least $12.1 billion to restore homes.

Blanco pushes Richard Baker's bill to buy damaged homes, repair them and resell them to the original owners if they want.

Blanco: People were told they didn't need flood insurance and 2 out of 5 who were affected by the storm did not have flood insurance.

Blanco: People who have lost everything can't get insurance and are having their credit ratings damaged. She is asking for foreclosures on homes in the wake of Katrina not be put on people's credit ratings.

Blanco: At least 18,000 businesses were completely destroyed. They need much more help than our state can give them. Please give them tax incentives. Then government can get out of the way and let owners get back on their feet.

Blanco: Our public utility had all of its systems destroyed. I ask you to help them. If you don't, extremely high energy rates will prevent a recovery.

Blanco: We ask for a 100 percent federal aid on Medicaid to help us get past our problems.

Blanco: OUr students are displaced all over the countries. Please send money to the districts that have taken them.

Blanco: Five things that need to be improved for disasters: Achieve communications, reforming the Stafford Act, focus on elderly in disasters, refining first responder evacs and getting agreements with the private section.

Blanco: Over 1.2 million people - 92 percent of the affected area - was evacuated thanks to contraflow.

Blanco: What we experience in Katrina was not a failure to communicate, but an inability to communicate. Four years after 9-11, we should have been able to do better.

Blanco: Calls for making a better communication system that won't go down during storms and that will include first responders, police, medical, fire, and government.

Blanco: Thank you for putting up $62 million to help us after Katrina, but due to the Stafford Act, much of it sits idle. Our hands and the law limit our ability.

Blanco: Hundreds of millions are being spent on temporary housing and would be better spent on permanent housing due to limitations.

Blanco: When local governments lose their entire tax base, the Stafford Act should allow government to pay regular time for a short period of time. Currently you can only pay overtime for government workers.

Blanco: We are looking at the problem of protecting the elderly before, during and after this tragedy.

Blanco: During storms, many elderly "shelter in place" in hospitals and homes because it is impractical to fly the frail and elderly all over the country every time a storm threatens. There must be provisions for generator power for those who cannot leave.

Blanco: Some major airlines cancelled flights into and out of New Orleans on Saturday before the storm. The weather was perfect. Many tourists were stranded.

Blanco: We are taking bold steps to help ourselves, but the gravity of the problem calls for help from Congress as well.

Blanco: I will be proposing further levee board consolidation. In the special session we took over failing schools and set up a uniform building code.

Blanco: We will audit, re-audit and audit some more, every nickel you give us.

Blanco: The $600 million in (state) budget cuts were hard but necessary.

Blanco: We have been served with a $3.7 billion estimated bill from FEMA. We generate $7 billion per year.

Blanco: In light of all the money forgiven by the U.S. in foreign debt. In light of all the money that went into New York after 9-11, California after the earthquakes and Florida after Andrew, surely we can give to Louisiana. We are rebuilding Iraq and I've seen it for myself.

Blanco: You hear about Katrina fatigue and how Washington is tired of talking about it. We're tired of being out of our homes and having our families separated. We don't want your pity, we just need a little help.

Blanco: Please stand by our people in this winter of discontent.

Blanco's testimony ends. Questioning begins.

Member of committe questions evacuation of New Orleans. Questions asked about why more school buses weren't used since evacuations during Georges and Ivan pointed out the need, according to documents.

He also questions why a mandatory evacuation wasn't ordered sooner given the dire warnings by the National Weather Service.

Blanco: I'm pleased to talk about our evacuation procedures. Previous test runs on disastrous hurricanes had showed a potential loss of life of 60,000. Boy, am I glad that didn't come out to fruition.

Question from Congress asks about those who were left behind and why they weren't taken care of with mandatory evacuation to be done sooner. Why weren't flooded school buses used to get out those who couldn't get out sooner?

Rep. Charlie Melancon: The buses were there, but the drivers had evacuated.

Blanco: We had to evacuate several low-lying areas prior to Orleans. That evacuation began early Saturday. It took a lot of courage to follow that plan. Mayor Nagin followed the plan.

Blanco: We urged people to get out with every warning we could give. You don't want the people in the low-lying coastal areas to get trapped. If we had not let them evacuate first, they may have been washed away on the highways, being blocked by urban traffic.

Blanco: Mayor Nagin is not responsible for everyone who stayed because people stayed in other regions as well. We asked people to help by checking on their neighbors and many did.

Blanco: We play roulette every year. Do we evacuate, will we evacuate for nothing? You sit in a car with your kids on the roads for hours and they're screaming and the storm doesn't come and you swear you won't do it again. Out of 1.2 million people in the affected area, only 100,000 stayed.

We did pre-planning that was a great success and a post storm situation that was ugly and that's what you want to focus on.

Blanco: It was not announced until Friday night that Louisiana was in the path of the storm. Many people woke up Saturday morning, packed up their cars and went to their ballparks and didn't even know a storm was coming.

Blanco: The word mandatory doesn't mean any more than us saying you have to go and we did that.

Blanco: There are always people who believe they are tougher than the storms. And they were right. All of those people in the dome would have walked home if the levees hadn't broken. They had done that before and they would have done that again.

Blanco: We won't accept the fact that our evacuation plan was inadequate. The mayor sent city buses all around the city asking people to get out. We have some people who are just ornery that way, who thought their homes were strong. This time they were wrong.

Blanco: What happened in Katrina makes evacuations easier, but even in Rita not everyone left.

Blanco to question: Do you think you can get 1.2 million out of harm's way in 36 hours? That's what we did.

Rep. Melancon: I have a brother and sister in New Orleans who are pretty smart and I had to beg them to get out, to leave.

Questioner asks why mandatory evacuation wasn't ordered earlier because processes would have been in place to make people leave.

Blanco: Mandatory is next to impossible if your expectation is 100 percent to leave.

Blanco: To our citizens, evacuate is the magic word.

Blanco: We did call for mandatory evacuations in the low-lying areas and people still didn't leave.

Blanco: Those who were still in place had the time to leave if they were able to.

Question to Blanco: Knowing what we know now, what would you have done differently on evacuations.

Blanco: We're doing a review. We'll figure out how to help the city and other parishes whose citizens need help getting out. We'll figure out where the buses can be staged, those buses you had so many nice pictures of.

Rep. Bonilla: One of the big problems you have is the pictures of dysfunction and confusion that appeared on TV in the days after the storm. A lot of our constituents are telling us not to support big funding for the Gulf Coast without strict accountability. We know there are tremendous needs, but there is a lot of Katrina fatigue that people are dealing with in the heartland. The leadership in Congress is trying to put a package together and tack it to a bill funding the military. We don't know if a stand alone bill to help you all would pass. It's absolutely critical that every time you all are seen that you do the best you can, it's critical.

The levees were built by the Army Corps, the question is were they properly maintained by your local authorities.

Blanco: Before Katrina I would have said yes. Now, I would say no.

Bonilla: What are you doing to demonstrate that any money to fix levees will be spent in a proper way.

Blanco: The money for maintenance of levees come from federal dollars and they have been on the short end, rather than on the adequate end.

Bonilla: It's wise for states and governments to come before us and to show what they are doing themselves to help themselves. What is Louisiana doing in terms of helping themselves.

Blanco: We're crippled, but we put $10 million into a bridge loan program to tide businesses over while waiting for SBA loans. We took $195 million for low-interest loans for home owners. I had to cut $600 million out of the state's budget, because we were projecting a $1 billion shortfall. We used some of our rainy day monies to make up the difference. We are trying to keep our ship afloat, but it is very difficult.

Bonilla: There's no doubt that you are sincere. I've made a tour and it's a nightmare and you can't get a sense unless you tour it yourself. Do you think ethnicity or race played a part in evacuating anyone or decisions made on the local, state or federal level?

Blanco: No sir.

Rep. McKinney: Asks committee members to travel to the area before making their final report.

McKinney: I strongly disagreed with your "shoot to kill order" and what role did media reports have in your decision? Why were mercenaries patrolling the streets? Did you hire mercenaries?

McKinney: Under what circumstances is it acceptable for local law enforcement officers to prevent citizens from evacuating?

McKinney: What steps are you taking to allow displaced residents to vote in local elections?

McKinney: What are you doing to get locals involved in rebuilding the city.

Blanco to first question: Media reports showed rampant violence and we tried to verify it. Some looting was occurring but people should be allowed to get food and water if they need it. I brought in the National Guard and told them to come smartly dressed and fully armed and wanted them to be "locked and loaded" and frighten off and remove any criminal element that was threatening our people. After they came, things relaxed after that.

Blanco: I don't need mercenaries and didn't authorize anything like that.

Blanco: The issues at Gretna were difficult. They didn't discriminate, they didn't let anyone in to their borders.

Blanco: We are trying to communicate with all of our displaced voters but FEMA won't give us a list of where they are, but until we can communicate with them, we won't be able to hold elections. We're working on that, but we're asking for some relief from the privacy act.

Blanco: This is another thing we have been fighting. Our people are out of jobs and they need to be working in the recovery effort and lots of other folks are being brought in. We're asking contractors to hire local people, but it's a battle. We have some successes, but not that much.

McKinney: Is it okay for law enforcement (in Gretna) to prevent people from evacuating.

Blanco: It is not okay.

Rep. Buyer: Asks why Louisiana would not allow federalization of recovery.

Blanco: The National Guard were the people on the ground leading the mission with me. If I didn't have the National Guard helping me, we'd still be rescuing people. The Guard is supposed to be National service first and combat second. If this isn't a stronger cause than what's going on in Baghdad, than this country is in a sorry state.

Buyer: When federal government offered to help, you didn't want them to.

Blanco: I never rejected federal assistance. I begged for it.

Blanco: Every governor in this country has a National Guard to use if they need it. Fortunately Guard troops from every state came to our aid.

Blanco: My state's resources were overwhelmed, your federal resources were overwhelmed.

Blanco: Being overwhelmed is nothing to be ashamed of. What we had to do was save lives and we were doing it.

Rep. Bill Jefferson: At the end of the day, most of our people who were lost would not have died if our levees had not failed.