[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 70 (Friday, May 23, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5093-S5095]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      THE DISASTER IN NORTH DAKOTA

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to speak just for a moment about 
what is happening in North Dakota, my home State, the disaster that 
occurred there and my disappointment, my profound disappointment that 
it appears that Congress will leave for the Memorial Day recess without 
having addressed that issue.
  First, a number of us think there are important things we do from 
time to time. Today was important for a couple of reasons. My daughter 
Haley, age 7, last evening, when I arrived home at 10 o'clock, because 
the Congress is going late every day, asked me if I was going to be 
able to come to her second grade puppet show this morning. And I said 
of course, I wouldn't miss her second grade puppet show, because she 
has been talking about it for a month. So I missed the first votes this 
morning to go to my daughter's puppet show. While I regret I missed 
votes, I think I did what was most important.
  Some of these choices that we make about what we must do to meet 
certain obligations sometimes are difficult--that is not a difficult 
one--because the schedule here in the Senate is kind of a difficult 
schedule. As the presiding officer knows, the difficulty in balancing 
our obligations sometimes presents significant obstacles for us. Almost 
every night this week we have worked very late. I have been a conferee 
on the supplemental appropriations bill as a Member of the Senate 
Appropriations Committee. We have been working day after day on that 
piece of legislation. We have also been working on the budget 
agreement.
  While one of the important things I did this morning was to attend a 
second grade puppet show for a young girl I am enormously proud of, 
another important thing I did today was to cast a vote in support of a 
budget proposal that I think is important for this country. I have cast 
previous votes just like

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that. In 1993 I cast a vote for a budget agreement that was a tough 
vote. It only prevailed by one vote; one vote. The Vice President had 
to come to this Chamber and cast the tie-breaking vote, the deciding 
vote. It cut spending, increased some taxes, and people said, ``If you 
do it, you are going to cause a depression in this country and put this 
country in a tailspin.''
  We said, I said, the President said, and those of us who voted for it 
said: It is important for us to do what's necessary to get this Federal 
deficit under control, and if the medicine is tough medicine, so be it. 
We are willing to support it. I voted for it and I am glad I did.
  Since that time, since 1993, we have had steady economic growth. We 
have had lower inflation--down, down, and down for 4 years; 
unemployment has dropped, down, down, and down for 4 years. We have an 
economy that is in good shape--low unemployment, low inflation, good 
economic growth, and the Federal deficits have come down 75-percent 
since 1993. There has been a 75-percent reduction in the Federal 
deficit because, in 1993, we did what was the right thing to do.
  My political party paid an awful price for that, as a matter of fact. 
Some of my colleagues who were willing to vote for that are not in this 
Chamber any longer. But it was the right thing to do. And now the 
Congress takes the second step. This one, I am pleased to say, is 
bipartisan. The previous one, we did not get any votes from that side 
of the aisle--not one. And we prevailed by one vote. Today, I am 
pleased to say--and I hope the American people feel some comfort--that 
it is a bipartisan effort. The second step is bipartisan and that makes 
a great deal more sense in our country, for us to be working together. 
Instead of trying to figure out how do you get the worst of each, maybe 
we ought to spend time trying to figure out how to get the best of 
both: How do you work together, not how do you fight each other. And 
this budget agreement is an agreement hammered out by the White House 
and by Republican and Democratic leaders in the Congress.

  Is it perfect? No. Would I have done it differently, had I written it 
myself? Yes. Is there more to do? Sure. But is it the right thing for 
this country, to be saying to the American people on a bipartisan basis 
that fiscal responsibility is important; that your comfort about the 
future of this country can increase because the Congress is not going 
to continue to spend money it doesn't have on things it doesn't need; 
is not going to continue to charge what it now consumes to our kids and 
grandkids? That is important. And that is the second thing I did today 
that was important. And I am pleased I cast that vote and I expect I 
will remain satisfied over the years that I was a part of that effort.
  But not every day has moments that are satisfying. We each make of 
our individual days what we choose to make of them. You can get up and 
have a bad attitude and be in a bad mood all day long, if you like. The 
one thing we are in charge of is our attitude. You can decide you are 
going to make something of yourself, do something good for the country; 
you are going to do something worthwhile for your families. Well, all 
of us have different ways of dealing with the days. I mentioned a 
couple of ways that satisfy me today, a second grade puppet show and a 
budget deal that I think makes sense for this country.
  Let me also, if I might, describe something that causes me enormous 
heartache today. I have worked for weeks with colleagues here in the 
Senate on a disaster appropriations bill. My colleagues in the Senate, 
from Senator Stevens, the chairman of that committee, to Senator Byrd, 
the ranking member of the committee, and so many others on the Senate 
Appropriations Committee have done a remarkable job, a wonderful job of 
creating a disaster bill that says to the people who suffer in our 
region of the country: We want to help you. You are not alone.
  We worked day and night and one would have hoped that a bill 
providing disaster relief would have been enacted before the Congress 
takes a recess for Memorial Day. But, guess what, last evening we were 
told that the other body had decided it cannot provide a disaster 
relief bill. All of the provisions of the disaster relief in the 
supplemental appropriations bill are largely agreed to. They are not in 
controversy. There is no disagreement. So the money is agreed to. Yet, 
this bill that contains other issues, some of them totally unrelated to 
the disaster, and some of them very controversial--those are the 
provisions, incidentally, that have held up the bill and derailed the 
bill--we are told, because of those other provisions, it cannot be 
done. The House of Representatives, the other body, says it just will 
not do it.
  Let me tell you why this is important and why I think it is an 
enormous setback for the people who are out there, waiting for disaster 
aid. If some do not now know, and I expect all Americans do, having 
watched television, about what my constituents have faced, and the 
constituents in Minnesota and South Dakota have faced, let me describe 
it again briefly: 3 years worth of snow in 3 months in North Dakota, 
seven to eight major blizzards closing down virtually all of the roads 
in the State. The last blizzard put nearly 2 feet of snow across the 
State of North Dakota; tens of thousands, over 100,000 head of 
livestock dead, 1.7 million acres of farmland inundated by water; a 
river not 100 yards wide becomes a lake 150 miles by 20 and 30 miles.
  As that river is channeled through our cities, it reaches Grand 
Forks, ND, and East Grand Forks, MN, and it reaches a record level 
never before reached on the Red River in those two cities. And then the 
dike breaks in the middle of the night and the dike begins failing all 
across the town and the residents of East Grand Forks, MN, and Grand 
Forks, ND, had to flee for their lives. Many of them rushed down the 
street to get on a National Guard truck, with only the clothes on their 
back, having left everything behind in their homes. They have left 
their vehicles. They have left all their personal goods, and they get 
on a truck, or some other device, and they flee the community. In East 
Grand Forks, MN, 9,000 people were evacuated. The entire town was 
evacuated. In Grand Forks, ND, 50,000 population, 90 percent of the 
town evacuated.

  When you tour the town next, a day or two after the dike broke, you 
tour it with a Coast Guard boat and the cars that were on Main Street 
could not be seen because the water was well above the level of those 
automobiles. There was nobody in town of a town of 50,000 people or a 
town of 9,000 people--totally evacuated.
  Then a fire starts and destroys parts of several downtown blocks. One 
entire block is devastated, 11 major buildings in the historic district 
of downtown Grand Forks are destroyed and firefighters, fighting a fire 
chest-deep in ice cold water, suffering hypothermia, were fighting a 
fire in a flood, trying to get in front of a fire that destroyed part 
of the downtown of a city. Meantime, 4,000 people are out in an 
aircraft hangar at the Grand Forks Air Force Base leaving their homes 
now to sleep on a cot.
  So we went to the Air Force base. Vice President Gore came to North 
Dakota. President Clinton came to North Dakota. And you see men and 
women and families, children out in these airplane hangars sleeping on 
cots, living in hangars because there was nowhere to go.
  Today, weeks later, there are somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 
people in Grand Forks, ND, and East Grand Forks, MN, who are not yet 
back in their homes. So this morning, they woke up in a strange place. 
Tonight, they will go to bed in a strange place, and what of Members of 
Congress? They recessed for Memorial Day. It was time to go home. Oh, 
they had some unfinished business. One piece of unfinished business was 
to say to the people in Grand Forks and East Grand Forks and people in 
South Dakota and Minnesota that ``you are not alone; here is a helping 
hand.'' We just passed a disaster bill, but the people in the other 
body didn't have time for that. Do you know why they didn't have time 
for it? They said to us yesterday, ``If we had taken the disaster 
portions out of the supplemental appropriations bill and passed them 
alone, we would have lost our leverage.''
  What kind of leverage is it that they are talking about, do you 
think? The leverage to pass an amendment that they have stuck on that 
bill which has

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nothing to do with the disaster. It has to do with Government 
shutdowns--very controversial amendment--and has no relationship to a 
disaster bill. But they stuck it on there knowing they could hold 
hostage thousands of victims of these floods, and that is exactly what 
happened.
  We have come to the end of this week, and the other body decided it 
doesn't have time; they were unwilling to pass a disaster bill.
  I have been around this institution for some long while, first in the 
House of Representatives and now in the Senate. There is not a 
precedent for this. Nowhere that I know of is there a precedent for a 
disaster bill, when people have suffered in a region of this country, 
for someone else to say, ``Oh, by the way, I know this is a disaster, 
so I am going to stick this on my agenda, and either you pass it that 
way or it doesn't get passed.'' At no time that I know of has someone 
in Congress said to those who suffered earthquakes in California or 
floods along the Mississippi in 1993 or tornadoes or fires, never have 
I heard the Congress say, ``And, by the way, yes, we're in the business 
of disaster relief, but we want to stick extraneous amendments on which 
are controversial, and we are willing to play with the threat of a veto 
by a President because we're not so concerned about the victims of a 
disaster.''
  Some have said, ``Well, it's not urgent; it can wait a couple of 
weeks.'' Let me describe for my colleagues why it is urgent and why 
what the House has done, if it continues to do it--and it looks like it 
will--why it is significant to the people of our region.
  The money in this bill, $500 million for Community Development Block 
Grants, which is the most flexible money available to help rebuild and 
recover, cannot be made available, cannot be obligated and cannot be 
committed by these cities to say to those folks who lost everything, 
and lost their homes especially, that ``here is our new floodplain, 
here is where we are going to buy out the homes, here is a commitment 
we will buy out your home, and now you can start building anew.'' This 
delays that. It delays recovery. It delays rebuilding. It delays 
repair. And delay is critical in our part of the country.

  We have a very short construction season. This 2-week delay, 4-week 
delay, or 6-week delay, whatever it turns out to be, is a devastating 
delay to people who are not in their homes and who are awaiting answers 
from local officials about what will happen to the home that is already 
destroyed.
  So, Mr. President, there is no excuse for what has happened. I want 
to make it clear that the Senate Appropriations Committee created a 
disaster portion of this bill that is a wonderful, wonderful response 
to the people of our region.
  I commend Senator Stevens and Senator Byrd and all of the people who 
worked together to do that. That is not where the problem is. They are 
to be complimented. The problem exists because we had some folks on the 
other side of the Capitol who said, ``We don't care. We're leaving. 
We've got a plane ticket and a ride out of town.''
  I ask those who are now on their way, if they have the time in the 
next week when the Congress is on recess, to stop by Grand Forks, ND. I 
just finished talking to the mayor. There is a line of people outside 
the civic center, and every single one of them is asking, ``What is 
happening to the funding? Do you have the ability to commit so we know 
if there is going to be a buyout of our house? Do you have some 
commitment to rebuild?'' Every one of them is asking, ``When will we 
know?''
  To those who believe it is important to go on recess and ignore the 
needs of people in a disaster, I say, ``Stop by Grand Forks and explain 
to those folks why that was their priority.''
  This disaster portion of this bill is a good portion of the bill. The 
Senator from Washington is here. He serves on the Senate Appropriations 
Committee with me. All of it with respect to disaster is now agreed 
to--all of it. I compliment every member of that committee because they 
have done a wonderful job. It simply could have been lifted out and 
passed so at least the disaster portion is available, because we did it 
and did it right. Republicans and Democrats working together did it 
right.
  But what happened was, last evening, some folks on the other side 
said, ``We're sorry, we're just not going to do that, we're going 
home.'' And if I sound a little angry--I guess that is probably an 
appropriate word to describe it. I don't think that I ought to stand 
here and say, ``Well, that's the way the system works.'' I represent 
thousands of people who don't have a home, thousands of people who 
don't have much hope, thousands of people who are asking for help. And 
I think it is unconscionable that anyone on that side of the Capitol 
believes it is appropriate to leave those people high and dry without 
an answer, without hope, and without help.
  Oh, yes, it is going to come, and when it comes, I am going to be 
thankful that it is there. But, between now and then, it is delayed--
delay of recovery, delay of rebuilding and delay of providing hope that 
we should well provide to the people of that region. There hasn't been 
one instance since I have been in Congress that I have not been the 
first to say, ``Sign me up'' when there is an earthquake in California 
that devastates that region. I say it is our job, yes, our job as North 
Dakota taxpayers to say to them, ``We want to help you.''
  The same is true of every region of the country that has suffered 
disaster. It is important for us to reach out and help, and it is 
especially important now when we need help for the rest of the country 
to do that. The Senate Appropriations Committee was prepared to do it 
and had written a piece to do it. Regrettably, it is Friday afternoon, 
and it now looks like there will be a recess without disaster aid going 
to people who will not be sleeping in their bed--not a hundred of them, 
not a thousand of them, but thousands and thousands--who the mayors of 
these cities say await word of when this help is coming.
  I don't know if there is going to be other news today on this 
subject, but I hope some way is found and that this will not be the 
final message as this Congress leaves for the Memorial Day recess. If 
it is, I pledge to be on the floor the first time this Congress 
reconvenes to say to my colleagues that now is the time to at least 
pass the disaster portion of this bill.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mr. LEVIN. I wonder if the Senator from Washington will yield for an 
inquiry as to how long he expects to be.
  Mr. GORTON. The Senator from Washington will take somewhere between 
10 and 15 minutes.
  Mr. LEVIN. I thank the Senator.

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