Texas Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro said Wednesday that it will take “years and years” to rebuild the city of Houston, due to the collapse of infrastructure from Hurricane Harvey.
“It’s just complete devastation in terms of the infrastructure and people’s homes. This is going to take years and years to rebuild,” Castro said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Castro urged Congress to come together to support a bipartisan rescue package, and said it’s important to learn from the mistakes made in 2012 during Hurricane Sandy.
“I hope that we learned our lesson after super storm Sandy. I hope that Congress can go back into session and Texas will probably need a supplemental package in the tens of billions of dollars,” Castro said. “I hope we can support that both as Republicans and Democrats. And really learn a lesson not to get into the divisiveness that characterized the super storm Sandy relief package.”
Castro said some legislators will be tempted to tie the relief bill to something political — like the border wall — but said he supports a clean standalone bill.
“In the back of my mind I keep thinking it’s possible that some legislators, and hopefully not the president, but that some legislators may want to put the border wall funding in a package for Texas,” the congressman said. “I hope we can rule that out, but unfortunately in today’s politics, in today’s Congress, I don’t know that we can. So I hope it will be a clean bill that only affects disaster related things.”
He said the full effects of the storm will not be felt for some time, and placed search and recovery as a top priority as Texas residents attempt to rebuild their communities.
“The longer the storm goes on, the longer that it rains, the bigger these challenges become. So in the immediate future, it means dealing with these secondary effects. In the long term it’s going to be about search and rescue, search and recovery, and in rebuilding the city of Houston,” Castro said.
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