A storm dropped about 4 inches of rain along the coast on Sunday - but it also brought something else to our city. Dread. Fear. Anxiety. Call it a condition of post-Harvey stress disorder. A much-needed mini-deluge after the fourth-driest November on record remains little match for the memories of flooded neighborhoods and rescue flotillas. Nobody forgets how quickly the water can climb from the bayou banks to your front doorstep - at least nobody in Houston.

Politicians in Washington, D.C., have a shorter memory.

That's why a delegation from City Hall is visiting our nation's capital today. The Trump administration rolled out an insultingly inadequate hurricane recovery bill last month, and Congress must be reminded of its duty to help our city rebuild from Harvey and prepare for the next hurricane. Millions of lives and billions of dollars flow through the roads, rails and pipelines that crisscross our Energy Capital of the World. Disaster in Houston has ramifications across the globe.

Three major flood prevention projects must be at the top of their honey-do list for Congress. This includes the third reservoir at Cypress Creek, a coastal storm surge barrier and bayou infrastructure, including the completion of Project Brays.

Congress also needs to cut the red tape that can slow our recovery.

Removing the $5 million cap on FEMA Community Disaster Loans will ensure that local governments can be fully reimbursed after cleaning up all the wreckage left behind by Harvey. And loosening environmental reviews for repairing single-family homes will help Houston avoid one of the major barriers to recovery that New Orleans faced after Hurricane Katrina.

Our lawmakers also need to unravel a bizarre plan by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney to redirect $12 billion in Community Development Block Grants toward competitive infrastructure grants. Never before have cities and states been forced to fight over flood prevention funds - especially after enduring such massive disasters. You have to wonder about the moral mind-set of an administration that sees nothing wrong in a plan to pit Texas and Florida against each other in a struggle to survive. We might as well be watching "The Hunger Games" ethos as adopted for public policy. CDBGs should be spent rebuilding neighborhoods. Mitigation projects must be funded through the Army Corps of Engineers. And Congress has to make it all happen.

If our representatives forget about Houston's recovery, then it will fall on voters to remember during the 2018 election.