Applauding Governor Haley Barbour
APPLAUDING GOVERNOR HALEY BARBOUR -- (House of Representatives - September 21, 2005)
(Mr. KINGSTON asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. KINGSTON. Madam Speaker, we just had the opportunity this morning, some of us, to hear from the Governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour.
What a refreshing example of leadership Mr. Barbour has offered our country. Unfortunately, as compared to the Governor of his neighboring State, Louisiana, faced with the same disasters, faced with loss of life, faced with billions of dollars in property damage, Mr. Barbour did not take the opportunity to bash Washington, to whine about what the Federal Government did or did not do; but, rather, on a local level, with folks like the mayor of Biloxi and the mayors of all the other towns and the police chiefs and the police forces and the local emergency management agencies, faced up to the disaster, did everything that they could to show folks that yes, this is tough, and unfortunately government is not the answer to everything, but we can work together, we can face up to this thing and we can bring Mississippi back and bring Mississippi back strong.
I applaud Governor Barbour for the leadership he has provided. He gave us a case of one police force where the police station was flooded. The police officers did not cut and run. They did not evacuate. They went to the top floor. The top floor got flooded. They went to the roof of the building. It got flooded. They swam to nearby tree tops. They spent the night on trees. And yet the next morning rather than whine and say, oh, pity me, they came back to work and never evacuated, even though on a personal level all of those police officers from this particular precinct lost all their houses. Their homes were gone and their families had to evacuate for many weeks of separation.
That is the face of some of the great American people that we are seeing, not just in Mississippi but also in Louisiana and Alabama, but I particularly applaud Governor Barbour for his leadership.
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