Cornyn Continues To Pretend He’s Doing Something About Improving Levees In The Rio Grande Valley

Once again, U.S. Senator John Cornyn gets headlines for all of his alleged “efforts” to repair levees in the Rio Grande Valley.

The problem is that Cornyn had almost six years to do something about fixing the levees in the Rio Grande Valley. He’s had three years since the levees were in the national spotlight after Hurricane Katrina to do something. To date, he’s big grand gesture has been sending an email to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Now, he’s stepped up his game and issued a statement and (gasp!) participated in a subcommittee hearing:

In a written statement, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, announced Tuesday that he participated in a Senate subcommittee hearing to review response and recovery efforts for recent hurricanes, including Hurricane Dolly, which struck the Rio Grande Valley July 23.

Cornyn said he also sent a letter to the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee to request its backing to his levee reimbursement legislation for the Rio Grande Valley as part of the upcoming emergency supplemental legislation for disaster relief.

Pointing to Dolly, which caused extensive flooding, Cornyn wrote that, “while this created real hardship for victims, Dolly could have been an unimaginable disaster had the levees along the Rio Grande River failed. A catastrophic levee breach would threaten tens of thousands of Texans, and cause billions of dollars in property damage.”

Cornyn pointed out that IBWC reported five years ago that the levees along the Rio Grande River were inadequate to protect communities in a 100-year flood event, and that a number of levees in the Lower Rio Grande Valley would have to be raised to protect against flooding.

Cornyn admits that it has been five years since he was aware of the problem. Yet, until this year–when he is up for re-election, he’s done nothing to help residents of the Rio Grande Valley. Now, he’s following the typical Republican modus operandi of taking advantage of a natural disaster to further his re-election campaign by acting like he is swooping down and actually doing something.

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