After two hurricanes in two weeks on the gulf coast, Tuesday in Washington, D.C., several congressional committees turned their focus to the region's recovery.

"The Gulf Coast has suffered tremendously during Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, and that while we have all our eyes on bailouts and Wall Street, let's not forget these are real needs along the Gulf Coast," said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La.

Landrieu chaired the Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery, hearing from local lawmakers on post-storm needs. For Louisiana, the price tag inflicted by both storms could reach upwards of a billion dollars.

But state officials say they need more than just short-term help. They are also requesting money for long-term projects, more than a billion dollars for coastal levee work and barrier island restoration.

"Instead of looking at individual assistance, let's look at community-wide assistance," said state Sen. Reggie Dupre, D-District 20

"It's not just good enough to sprinkle a few trailers here, a few Go-Zone bonds here and a few low-income housing tax credits there and think, Voila, everything is going to happen perfectly. It's not," said Landrieu.

Yet state leaders say they know they face stiff competition for federal dollars, from both a $700 billion dollar bailout for financial firms and from Texas, which sent its own lobbying group to Capitol Hill today.

"I don't think we're going to get everything we need, but I think we can get on the right road to recovery and prevention of these disasters in the future," Dupre said.

Meanwhile, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin testified before a House subcommittee on Capitol Hill Tuesday about FEMA’s post-storm response so far this year.

“The supplies that we thought were originally pre-positioned, we ran out pretty fast. Ice was not pre-positioned accordingly and we're starting to see some of the struggles we had during Katrina manifest themselves during Gustav and Ike and in Texas," Nagin said. "We're just trying to say, do a little advance planning, learn from what we've gone through and let's do a better job in the future."

Governor Bobby Jindal also spent the day in Washington, D.C., attending a series of meetings on Capitol Hill. He is asking that the federal government pay 100 percent of the state's cost-share on public assistance, about $150 million dollars, a request that has already been granted to Texas after Hurricane Ike.