(Bush) can get all the money he wants out of Congress 'cause of this disaster, the people will be solidly behind him, the media will cover it like crazy and he's gonna look like Santa Claus.

The president has such mastery of all of the tools of disaster relief. It's a military effort, Congress appropriates whatever you want, he controls the executive branch, and this is something where Bush can just go ahead and do his thing and all the Democrats can do is sigh.

We need to stop spending money on death, the war in Iraq and on enhancing the lives of the people in our own country.

If Congress does not approve the funding then $2.5 million of federal and local money will have been spent with nothing to identify workable projects.

We were able to give them priority based on a natural disaster preference,

Refineries lost a lot of money. In fact they lost money for most of the 1990s. People chose not to spend on refineries. So what's affecting us now is that we're behind the investment curve and it will take us five to 10 years to catch up.