Earlier today, we pointed out a report by CBS News that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has not acted to deploy the vast majority of National Guard troops that he requested – and the Department of Defense made available – to help respond to the oil spill. During the nearly two-months that the troops have apparently been available, Jindal has been leading critic of federal bureaucracy that he says has stood in the way of local responders.

Gov. Jindal’s office told us this morning that they would get back to us with a statement for the record. We’ve just received a statement from Jindal spokesman Kyle Plotkin, and here it is in full:

We will call up more National Guard troops as the Adjutant General tells us he needs them. Right now our biggest challenge is the broken federal system that takes weeks to approve requests for resources – from vacuum barges, to sand boom projects, to the rocks and barges project in Grand Isle – and then ends up shutting things down even after we finally get them started (vacuum barges last week, dredging operations this week which are still sitting idle after federal shutdown). We spend more time fighting red tape and bureaucracy than we ever should have to if the federal government understood this oil spill as the war that it is. Especially as we get further into hurricane season, we need them to either fix their slow and broken process or just get out of the way so we can continue doing what we need to do to protect our coast and our Louisiana way of life.