[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 65 (Friday, May 16, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4652-S4654]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS AND RESCISSIONS ACT

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, first is the disaster appropriations bill.
  Last week the Senate passed an appropriations bill to provide 
supplemental appropriations for the disasters that have occurred in our 
country, and it is especially important to me and to our region.
  This bill would provide substantial amounts of resources and money 
for people who have been victims of the disaster in North Dakota, South 
Dakota, and Minnesota.
  I am enormously impressed that the House of Representatives last 
evening passed a disaster bill that contains almost identical amounts 
of money for the disaster relief that we put in here in the Senate. We 
added $500 million to the bill--$100 million that the President 
requested be added, and $400 million above that for what is called 
community development block grants. That represents the most flexible 
of Federal spending that goes to State and local governments. It 
provides great flexibility for them. It is packaged in a way that helps 
them resolve their problems and help their people who are victims of 
the disaster.
  While I am very pleased of the actions of the House last evening, we 
now go to conference. I will be a conferee because I am on the Senate 
Appropriations Committee. But we go to conference with a bill that has 
awfully good news in it for victims of the disaster in our region of 
the country. But the bill also contains a very controversial amendment 
that has nothing to do with this bill. This is an amendment that has to 
do with ending Government shutdowns at the end of the fiscal year if 
the appropriations bills are not passed on time. They are called 
continuing resolutions. CR's, they are called.
  This disaster appropriations bill contains an amendment, dealing with 
the continuing resolution which is very controversial. The President 
said long ago would this amendment require him to veto the bill, if it 
is in the bill. And, nonetheless, the Senate has passed the bill and 
the House has passed a bill that constrains this very controversial 
amendment.
  I hope very much that this weekend, and in the early days of next 
week, as we work through this conference, that we can convince all of 
the people who are interested in this bill that the best interest of 
the people of the region who are victims of the disaster will be served 
by removing from this bill these amendments that have nothing to do 
with the disaster appropriations bill.
  We should not in any way attempt to delay or derail a disaster bill 
with extraneous amendments. It just shouldn't be done. I have not done 
it in the past. I have voted for disaster funds to help people who have 
been victims of floods, fires, tornadoes, blizzards, earthquakes, and I 
have been pleased to vote for those because I think it is important for 
people all over this country to extend a helping hand to those who are 
victims of a disaster. But I don't think it is appropriate for Members 
of Congress to decide this is a bill which is critical and important, 
that provides needed help to victims, and, therefore, because it is a 
bill that the President somehow must sign, they should put a 
controversial amendment on it that has nothing to do with the bill. 
That is exactly what has happened.

  I ask, with great respect to all of those involved in that effort to 
decide to do something different, to withdraw that amendment from this 
bill. Let's pass this bill out of conference, send it back to the House 
and to the Senate, and then to the President in a manner so that he can 
sign it.
  Why on Earth would the Congress include something in a bill that they 
know the President is going to veto, and thereby just create a delay in 
the aid to victims?
  There are thousands of North Dakotans and Minnesotans who woke up 
this morning not in their own beds and not in their own homes. They are 
homeless. It has been weeks since this flood of a 500-year level hit 
the Red River and evacuated 95 percent of the people in the city of 
50,000, Grand Forks, ND. On the other side of the river, 100 percent of 
the city of East Grand Forks, MN, some 9,000 people were evacuated from 
their homes.
  In Grand Forks, ND, alone, somewhere between 600 and 800 homes are 
destroyed. No one will move back into those homes. They are destroyed. 
Another perhaps 1,000 homes are severely

[[Page S4653]]

damaged. Where are those families today? They are not home today. They 
are victims living with relatives, some in shelters, many in other 
towns struggling to try to figure out what they do and how they put 
together the pieces. Many people live paycheck to paycheck, struggling 
to try to figure out how they pay the bills.
  Many businesses are not open in Grand Forks and East Grand Forks 
because much of the town is still uninhabited. People do not have jobs. 
People do not know how they are going to pay their bills. Yes, FEMA is 
helping. FEMA is writing checks and helping people with their immediate 
needs. But these are victims of a disaster. They need help, and they 
don't need people to play a game with a disaster appropriations bill by 
adding an extraneous amendment that has nothing to do with the bill in 
a way that will delay and jeopardize the bill.
  I ask all of those who are involved in that, don't do that. Bring 
your proposal up next week or the week after. It doesn't matter to me. 
Let's debate it. You have every right to bring any idea to the floor of 
the Senate and have a debate on it. But don't delay or jeopardize the 
disaster bill. It is fundamentally unfair to people this morning who 
still woke up without a home and without a job wondering what their 
future holds and looking to us for some hope.
  I have shown the pictures before. But I think it is important to do 
it again. Let me explain how we got where we are so that you understand 
the dimensions of it.
  We had 3 years' worth of snow in 3 months in my State. This is a 
snowbank. This happens to be flat ground. There is a farmer in front of 
a snowbank. It gives you a little idea of how high those snowbanks 
became in the middle of our blizzards in North Dakota. That is about an 
18-foot snowbank.
  There were anywhere from six to nine serious blizzards, most of which 
closed down most of the roads in North Dakota. Some of them closed down 
every road in North Dakota. We had whiteout conditions. You could not 
see your hand in front of your face. The last blizzard, incidentally, 
was anywhere from 18 to 24 inches of snow dumped in about 48 hours on 
top of the record snowfall we had previously. So we had about 9 to 10 
feet of snow in North Dakota during this winter. Then what we had was a 
rapid spring melt in which all of this snowpack melted down. The Red 
River on the eastern side of our State is one of the few rivers that 
runs north. This river ran right into an ice pack up in Canada. We had 
this massive melt that created not a river but created a lake out of 
the Red River. And, this lake was 150 miles long by about 20 to 30 
miles wide.
  The result was that a massive quantity of water became a giant, 
coursing stream through Wahpeton, Breckenridge, Fargo, Moorhead, Grand 
Forks, and East Grand Forks. They were fighting floods in 80 locations 
in our region. The head of the Corps of Engineers said that he has 
never seen that kind of effort by local people to fight a flood. It was 
the most extraordinary effort he had ever seen.
  Down in Wahpeton and Breckenridge, they won some and lost some 
battles. Up in Fargo, they largely won the battle after very tense 
nights and days. In Grand Forks, the flood prediction was set at 49 
feet, the highest flood in the history of the Red River in Grand Forks. 
But the flood that came was 54 feet. It broke the dike and inundated 
the town.
  I traveled throughout Grand Forks. I viewed Main Street, downtown 
Grand Forks, and all of the neighborhoods in a Coast Guard boat.
  Take a look at the farms in the Red River Valley. This is a picture 
of a farm. It does not look like it. It looks like a building 
surrounded by a lake but it is farmland. We had 1.7 million acres under 
water.
  Then there were dead cattle. We lost somewhere around 150,000 head of 
cattle. A fellow who had just come from North Dakota told me yesterday. 
He was in town the day before and visiting with a fellow rancher, and 
the rancher said he had to go home and shoot some more calves. These 
young calves were born during calving season. Now their hooves were 
falling off. Their feet were falling off because they had been frozen. 
Farmers and ranchers lost some 150,000 head of cattle that were killed 
as a result of these storms.
  We had farmers calling radio stations saying they had lost their 
entire herd of cattle. They asked if anybody had seen their herd of 
cattle. There were dairy cows with udders frozen. In the last storm, 
which was the worst storm in 50 years, came in the middle of calving 
season. The Senator from Kansas knows very well about weather problems 
during calving season.
  So that is what people were confronted with. When the flood came, it 
inundated Grand Forks and East Grand Forks, and the towns were 
evacuated. In the midst of the flood, the downtown section of Grand 
Forks caught on fire. We had fire fighters in Grand Forks, as you can 
see from this picture, waist deep in ice cold water, some suffering 
hypothermia, fighting a fire. In the early stages they were fighting 
with fire extinguishers because they could not get pumper trucks in 
because of the flood. These are heroes. These folks who fought that 
fire are true heroes. We lost parts of three blocks of downtown Grand 
Forks, including 11 of the wonderful old historic buildings. That part 
of the historic city of Grand Forks burned to the ground.
  That is what was faced in this set of disasters. These are the 
victims up and down the Red River Valley who today wait for a message 
of hope from the Congress. They wait for the disaster bill that both 
the House and the Senate have now enacted that will go to conference. 
They wait for the President's signature on a bill that provides much-
needed help to these victims.
  It is critically important that those who have now added 
an amendment, which has nothing to do with this bill and that is very 
controversial, decide to withdraw it.

  Mr. President, all of us are proud of our States, all of us are proud 
of where we come from. I am enormously proud to be a North Dakotan, and 
I feel privileged every day I get up and come to work to represent 
North Dakota in the Senate. The most important thing I have done in my 
life, I guess, is representing North Dakotans in the Senate. It will 
undoubtedly be one of the most wonderful privileges I will have had in 
my lifetime when my service here is through.
  I do not, and have not in my years in both the House and Senate come 
to the Chambers of Congress asking for special help for our region. 
But, if ever a region needed help, our region does now. It is almost 
unprecedented that major communities in our country had to be 
evacuated. Now weeks after the evacuation, the communities are still 
not very functional. People are still homeless. People are still 
jobless.
  None of us quite knows the menu of exactly how you put all this back 
together. How do you restart an economy that was stopped dead still? 
How do you give hope to men and women who had a small business 
somewhere and have now lost all their inventory, and lost their 
building? Their business is gone and they have no money. How do you 
restore their hopes and dreams?
  How about a rancher or a farmer whose land is totally under water and 
who lost their entire herd of cows and calves? They wonder what will 
they do next? This is a case where our region needs help.
  We are a generous people in North Dakota, and we have always been the 
first to help. Just as America is a generous nation, and been the first 
almost anywhere in the world to offer help to people who need help. We 
have done the same in North Dakota to offer help to victims of 
hurricanes and earthquakes and floods elsewhere.
  This is a time that I am proud of Members of Congress for standing up 
in the Senate and in the House saying that we want to offer a package 
of help that in the bill passed by the Senate totaled somewhere close 
to $1.2-$1.3 billion of help for that region. It included $500 million 
of community development block grants which are the most flexible kind 
of resources available. I am enormously proud that Members of the House 
and Senate have done that. Now if we can do one more thing that will 
make me proud, it will be for those who have offered the controversial 
amendment that will attract a veto to this bill to decide it is not the 
right thing to do. This is not the right bill to do it on. It is not 
fair for the people of this region to do it now. It is time for them to 
decide to withdraw this amendment. Then we can have the conference, and 
get a bill we can send to

[[Page S4654]]

the President and have the President sign it. Then this critically 
needed assistance can flow to people of our region. It will be, I 
think, a very proud moment for all of Congress. I hope that will be the 
case in the coming days.

                          ____________________