Press Releases

“Without substantial and robust emergency appropriations from Congress . . . Louisiana families will continue to languish as a result of these devastating storms.”

BATON ROUGE, La. – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), and Reps. Clay Higgins (R-La.), Steve Scalise (R-La.), Mike Johnson (R-La.), Garret Graves (R-La.), Julia Letlow (R-La.) and Troy Carter (D-La.), today wrote to President Joe Biden alerting him to the need for disaster relief funds to help Louisiana recover from historic storm damage.

“Hurricane Ida moved slowly through Louisiana causing catastrophic wind damage and flooding in numerous parishes and leaving nearly 1,000,000 people statewide without electricity, which experts say it will take weeks to restore. At this time, many communities remain without access to drinking water, food, gasoline, and basic needs, while temperatures remain in excess of 100 degrees,” the lawmakers wrote.

“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. In fact, a record breaking five named storms—Cristóbal, Marco, Laura, Delta, and Zeta—hammered Louisiana within the past year resulting in dozens of lives lost and billions of dollars in damages,” the lawmakers continued.

The legislators pointed out that many communities across Southwest and Central Louisiana, such as Lake Charles, Lafayette, Leesville and Alexandria, among others, are still waiting for disaster funding from the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program.

“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 needs accounts like the CDBG-DR program, Louisiana families will continue to languish as a result of these devastating storms,” the lawmakers continued.

The letter is available here.