[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 80 (Tuesday, June 10, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H3641-H3642]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             PASS A CLEAN SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bob Schaffer of Colorado). Under a 
previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from California [Ms. 
Woolsey is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, earlier this year our country faced the 
disaster of floods and tornadoes that ravaged homes and businesses all 
across our Nation. In my district in California, the Russian River 
flooded our communities not once but twice this year. The damage was 
devastating. It devastated homes, businesses, agricultural lands, and 
the environment. It played havoc on the tourism industry at the Russian 
River.
  However, Mr. Speaker, in the Congress today we have a disaster of our 
own. This time the disaster has been caused by the flood of partisan 
game-playing and a tornado of political maneuvering by the majority 
party.
  It has been over 2 months since the President requested emergency aid 
for flood victims. But my colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
continue to hold disaster relief funds hostage. They have loaded down 
this supplemental appropriations bill with pet political projects and 
extraneous provisions and stopped this bill dead in the water.
  Mr. Speaker, the consequences of this delay are enormous. Disaster 
victims across America cannot reconstruct their businesses, their 
homes, their lives. They cannot clear their fields for new crops. They 
cannot get on with the job of rebuilding their lives and their 
environments.
  Speaking of victims and their lives, and about what this game is 
doing to them, the mothers and babies who rely on WIC, the women, 
infants, and children program, cannot wait any longer. They have to 
know whether they are going to be thrown off of that program. Without 
the $76 million in supplemental funds in this bill, more moms and 
children will be denied critical nutritional assistance, and fewer 
infants and children will get the nutritional

[[Page H3642]]

food they need to grow into healthy adults.
  Mr. Speaker, it is truly outrageous that the majority party is 
playing political football with the lives of flood and tornado victims 
and pregnant women and their babies.
  Mr. Speaker, while the rains have stopped and the Sun is shining in 
California today, the partisan games of the majority continue to cast a 
dark cloud over our recovery. Let us get on with it. Let us pass a 
clean supplemental appropriations bill that does what it was intended 
to do: provide emergency funds, not further some political agenda. Let 
us not tell these rained-out families that the Sun will come out next 
week or next month. Let us pass a clean supplemental and let us do it 
now.

                          ____________________