Gov. Abbott: $120 Billion Won’t Be Enough for Harvey Relief, Will Require More than Katrina

BASH: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION. I'm Dana Bash.

President Trump and the first lady spent Saturday visited victims in areas hit hardest by Hurricane Harvey. Trump tweeting late Saturday night, "Just got back to the White House from the great state of Texas and Louisiana where things are going well. Such cooperation and coordination."

Joining me now is the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. Governor, thank you so much for joining me.

I want to ask by looking back in time to Hurricane Sandy. After that hit in the northeast in 2012, the federal government spent $56 billion on relief efforts. And on Friday, the Trump administration asked Congress for 7.85 billion, an initial hurricane funding relief.

Given the devastation caused by this storm will $7 billion be even close to enough money from the federal government?

GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R), TEXAS: Dana, it will not be. However it's very clear that the president has made it clear, Congress is making it clear, this is just a down payment.

But let's not compare it to Sandy. Let's compare it to Katrina. Listen, the population size and the geographic size is far larger than Katrina and I think Sandy combined.

We have over 5 million people who are affected by this. It's not just the flood (ph) in Houston it is the hurricane swath all the way from Corpus Christi over to Beaumont. And so it's going to require even more that what was funded for Katrina, which was about $120 billion.

But in addition to that -- listen, we are trying to work to rebuild the state of Texas ourselves and that is why we have created this new fund, the state of Texas runs, called rebuildtexas.org. It's rebuildtx.org if people want to help doing (ph) this effort.