[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 76 (Thursday, June 5, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H3549-H3550]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   FLOOD RELIEF AND FLOOD PROTECTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from West Virginia [Mr. Wise] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WISE. Mr. Speaker, I voted against the emergency supplemental 
flood relief measure with heavy heart. I voted against it even though 
it had some funds for West Virginia. But the problem was that, as this 
bill moved along designed to provide flood relief and flood prevention 
for hard-hit areas, it got loaded up with things having nothing to do 
with floods.
  My constituents sometimes express wonder and confusion and anger at 
the fact that the Congress can start out with goal A in mind and 
somehow load it up with not just goal A but goals B, C, and D even 
though they have nothing to do with goal A, and that is what happened 
here.
  I want flood relief as much as anyone does. The people who already 
need flood relief, the people who need emergency housing and emergency 
response, that money is there. This goes to stream bank rehabilitation, 
assistance to farmers to assist with their crops where fences were 
damaged, rebuilding streams, that sort of thing.
  I want that as much as anybody. But in order to get that, I was going 
to have to vote for a lot of other extraneous language that had nothing 
to do with flood prevention and flood rebuilding. I was going to have 
to vote for controversial language dealing with potential Government 
shutdowns. So I was faced with a quandary hereof, if I voted for the 
money to rehabilitate the river bank around flood-hit Herbert Hoover 
High School, I could in the future be endangering some level of Pell 
grants for students attending that high school. That did not make any 
sense to me.
  This bill got loaded up with controversial language about how to 
conduct the census in the year 2000. We have got floods in 1997, and 
somebody wants to put in controversial language about conducting a 
census in this country in the year 2000. We better hurry up and pass 
this clean flood relief bill or there will not be as many of us to 
count in that next census if we do not do something about flood 
prevention.
  It is quite clear that the President has already said, and he said 
weeks ago, that if we load this bill up and do something besides flood 
relief, he is going to veto it. So this bill, because it has passed the 
Senate and passed the House, will go to the President hopefully this 
weekend. He will veto it. It will come back to the Congress right away, 
and hopefully next week it can be a clean bill, one that deals only 
with flood relief and flood protection.
  I voted 2 weeks ago, maybe more than 2 weeks ago, for a version of 
this bill as it left the House. And the reason was that I wanted to 
keep it moving, hoping that in the other body and that in the 
congressional deliberations that take place between the House and the 
Senate that it would get cleaned up, the extraneous provisions would be 
taken off and it would deal with just flood protection and flood 
relief. Not only were those provisions not taken off, more were added, 
including the controversial census counting measures.
  So Mr. Speaker, it is my great hope that when the bill is vetoed, it 
will be back on the floor next week, little time will be lost, and it 
will come back as a clean bill. I was greatly frustrated when, after 
having voted for this bill just 2 weeks ago, the Congress immediately 
took a 10-day break over Memorial Day to go home. So where was the 
sense of urgency that I think was so important?
  So Mr. Speaker, it is my great regret that what started out as flood 
protection and flood relief turned into a vehicle for everybody's wish 
list, having nothing to do with flooding. Unfortunately there were a 
lot of provisions that stayed in this bill that had nothing do with 
flood relief and flood protection. But the good news is that the 
Congress can correct that, it ought to be in session this weekend, but 
the Congress can correct that early next week, pass a clean bill, and 
get it back to the President.
  Mr. Speaker, let us make sure that everyone in this country 
understands we can have flood protection and flood relief. It should be 
done immediately. That should be the goal of this Congress. We should 
debate controversial measures that have nothing to do with flood 
protection and flood relief; we can debate those other days, other 
times, when there is not as much urgency around those issues as there 
is around this one.

[[Page H3550]]

  I am looking forward, Mr. Speaker, next week to seeing a clean bill 
so that Republicans and Democrats alike can join in providing what 
everyone agrees needs to be done, genuine flood protection and flood 
relief.

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