House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday she supports the state's call to extend the timetable for Louisiana to make its $1.8 billion share of payments for levee improvements. But she stopped short of endorsing the 30-year payment plan the governor has urged.

Pelosi, part of a delegation of House Democrats on the Gulf Coast to gauge progress since Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005 and assess ongoing needs, said she planned to work with Gov. Bobby Jindal and the Bush administration to "see what we can get, under what conditions."

The state has been pushing for an extension, saying a three-year payment schedule would hamper recovery efforts and take money from other programs.

"Start taking a billion dollars out of the general fund, it strangles the recovery, to be very honest," said Paul Rainwater, executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority.

In addition to the call for a payback extension, some in the delegation also called on President Bush to do so, by executive order, and urged the administration to reduce the state's burden of the cost-share.

It wasn't the only need raised with the delegation on a trip that also offered glimmers of hope and signs of progress.

Higher education officials, while claiming successes in returning to buildings and enrolling students, cited problems with insurance and retaining and recruiting faculty.

The passage of $73 million in housing vouchers was applauded, but the delegation was urged to extend disaster housing assistance -- essentially, rental subsidies -- for working families and other hurricane victims to avert another potential wave of post-Katrina homelessness. Affordable housing is a major concern in the city, where an estimated 12,000 people are homeless.

And workers at a modular community health clinic, while helping serve the needs of residents in eastern New Orleans, stressed the need to have a planned teaching hospital built, soon, to address specialized health needs it cannot.

Tangee Wall, a resident of eastern New Orleans, said it meant a lot to see members in a hard-hit area that she believes is too often overlooked.

Nearly half of the 20 or so members on the trip were seeing the area for the first time as lawmakers, evoking angry, passionate calls for more help.

"You get the sense there's still a lot of suffering, and we as a nation have not given this tragedy the urgent attention and resources it needs," said Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga. "Housing and health care issues abound, and we're still trying to fight our way through the government red tape three years later."

After touring the New Orleans area Monday, the delegation headed to Mississippi for a town hall meeting sponsored by U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., on insurance. A potential fight is looming in Congress over reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program.

Eddie Favre, the mayor of Bay St. Louis, Miss., called the cost and availability of insurance a major impediment to bringing more residents back, saying that in some cases, insurance costs more per month than mortgage payments. He estimated the current population of his city at 8,000 to 9,000, down from about 12,000 before Katrina.

"In a lot of areas, people are back to normal, whatever normal might be," he said, with residents back in neighborhoods and infrastructure work done or under way. But, "parts of the city don't look a lot different than last year or, other than having the debris removed, a whole lot different than ... the day after the storm."

It's that way in New Orleans, too, with work planned or under way on a host of road, public building and other projects but vast swaths of some neighborhoods still in ruins.

At a stop in Waveland, Miss., Pelosi told reporters that if the Senate was unwilling to pass a bill offering wind coverage through the National Flood Insurance Program, a model project including Mississippi might be possible.

Pelosi and others said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has indicated he is open to discussing a compromise on the multiple-peril insurance legislation. Congress members held a news conference Monday on Coleman Avenue, where city offices are still housed in trailers and tents. Empty lots outnumber the few new houses, including a Katrina cottage.

Democrats claimed success on a range of issues, from the housing vouchers to appropriation of billions for levee improvements and the passage of $3 billion in additional funds for a state-run homeowner rebuilding and buyout program.

One of the more poignant moments of Monday's tour came late in the New Orleans leg, when Pelosi embraced Valeria Schexnayder, a Lower 9th Ward resident who last year accosted her near the site of the levee breach and, through tears, said her home had been washed away and she wasn't sure whether she'd be able to rebuild.

On Monday, she welcomed Pelosi and others into her home, next to an empty lot with cement stairs leading nowhere, derelict homes and across the street from a lot lush with overgrown vegetation.

Pelosi, who sipped tea in Schexnayder's living room, said the woman could serve as an inspiration to others to rebuild in the sparsely populated, slow-to-recover Lower 9th.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn said he was changed by the images of suffering he saw on TV after Katrina hit and vowed to keep the ongoing recovery a focal point of Congress.

On Sunday, in an e-mailed statement to The Associated Press, an aide to Gen. Douglas O'Dell, federal coordinator for Gulf Coast rebuilding, said President Bush "has been consistent in his commitment and efforts to rebuild the Gulf Coast."

The statement from O'Dell's chief of staff, Paul T. Conway, went on to say Bush and Congress together have put forward more than $120 billion in federal funds targeting the region, plus tax incentives and $5.8 billion in new levee funding.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)