[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 114 (Tuesday, September 13, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1820-E1821]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT TO MEET IMMEDIATE NEEDS 
        ARISING FROM THE CONSEQUENCES OF HURRICANE KATRINA, 2005

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                         HON. MARTIN T. MEEHAN

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, September 2, 2005

  Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Speaker, for those of us not on the Gulf Coast, it is 
impossible to comprehend the experience of those whose lives have been 
upended by the brute force of Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans and much 
of the Gulf Coast are a disaster area--bodies float in floodwaters that 
still rise unchecked, power is out, looters steal without fear, and 
violence is widespread. Our Nation grieves with the residents and 
survivors and we will stand with them during the long road to recovery.

[[Page E1821]]

  Hurricane Katrina appears to be headed for the history books as one 
of the worst national disasters ever to hit the United States. Yet the 
deeper tragedy is not just how large a toll this storm will eventually 
take, but how avoidable it all could have been.
  The devastation wrought on the Gulf tonight is the result of two 
terrible disasters. The first was the fury of nature. The other is the 
unnecessary consequence of this government's inexcusable failure to 
prepare for the inevitable.
  The primary function of a government is to ensure the safety of its 
citizens. This Congress and this Administration have failed to do so in 
the most incompetent and willfully negligent way imaginable.
  This hurricane was not a surprise. For decades meteorologists, State 
and local officials, Army engineers, academics, and, yes, FEMA have 
warned that a Category Four or Five hurricane hitting New Orleans was 
among the top three most likely major disasters to affect the United 
States and that we must be prepared. The most recent analysis was 
conducted just last year, where a computer simulation of the fictional 
``Hurricane Pam'' pounded New Orleans much as Katrina did, pushing the 
waters of Lake Pontchartrain through the levees flooding the city and 
stranding 300,000 poor and African-American New Orleanians.
  The day before Katrina reached land, FEMA's own director, Michael 
Brown, raised the possibility of the levees being breached. On August 
28th, Brown told CNN that ``we knew from experience, based back in the 
'40s and even in the late 1800s, if a Category Four or Five hurricane 
were to strike New Orleans just right, the flooding would be 
devastating. It could be catastrophic.'' And yet the President said 
just yesterday that ``I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of 
the levees.''
  Plans to prepare for this catastrophe had been developed at FEMA as 
early as the 1990s when President Clinton's FEMA Director, James Lee 
Witt, laid out a plan for coping with a nightmare scenario in New 
Orleans that included pre-positioning hospital ships and pumps to 
handle the catastrophe. Why this was not done is just the beginning of 
the laundry list of problems with the response to this disaster. 
Command and control has still not been established. There are FEMA 
personnel on site and they can do nothing as they await instructions 
from the bureaucracy in Washington. When will someone take control? The 
Gulf Coast desperately needs a leader to emerge at FEMA who can direct 
its operation. Why has this taken so long?

  Lurking just below the surface is another set of troubling questions: 
What if this had been a terrorist attack? Is our emergency response 
capability so weak that a levee breach, or power outages, or debris can 
incapacitate an entire region? President Bush has pledged repeatedly 
since 9/11, now over 4 years ago, that he would keep our country safe. 
Is this the best this Administration can do? Do our citizens not 
deserve all the protection and support this government can provide?
  The reality is that this country is woefully unprepared to respond to 
a major domestic disaster in this country because FEMA has been 
systematically dismantled over the past 5 years by incompetent leaders, 
anti-government ideology, budget cuts, and bureaucratic red tape.
  FEMA's current problems essentially began with the creation of the 
Department of Homeland Security, which demoted FEMA from cabinet-level 
status and reduced it to one of 22 organizations under the umbrella of 
the Secretary of Homeland Security. Next, its mission was reprioritized 
and its budget cut, taking the emphasis off of responding to natural 
disasters while the upper ranks of management were filled by patronage 
hires, five out of eight having had no emergency preparedness 
experience. At the same time, FEMA's professional staff was becoming 
increasingly demoralized. By this week, nine out of ten regional 
director positions were vacant, as were three out of five disaster 
response director positions. This brain drain left an agency without 
the proper leadership, resources, or influence in government to cope 
with a major catastrophe.
  Responsibility, however, does not rest solely with the Bush 
Administration. This Congress has been a willing co-conspirator in the 
degradation of FEMA's capabilities.
  Since 2001, many Federal disaster mitigation programs have fallen to 
budgetary pressures. FEMA's Project Impact, a model mitigation program, 
has been canceled outright. Federal funding of post-disaster mitigation 
efforts designed to protect people and property from the next disaster 
has been cut in half, and now communities across the country must 
compete for pre-disaster mitigation dollars.
  In 2003, Congress approved a White House proposal to cut FEMA's 
Hazard Mitigation Grant Program in half. Previously, the Federal 
government was committed to investing 15 percent of the recovery costs 
of a disaster toward mitigating future problems. Under the Bush 
formula, only 7.5 percent are given. Experts say that such post-
disaster mitigation efforts are the best way to minimize future losses.
  In 2004 alone, Congress cut FEMA's budget by $170 million.
  And FEMA is not the only agency to feel the effects of budget cuts. 
Bush's 2005 budget proposal called for a 13 percent reduction in the 
Army Corps of Engineers' budget, down to $4 billion from $4.6 billion 
in fiscal 2004 and the New Orleans Corp of Engineers was to lose $71.2 
million out of its budget, the largest cut in its history. This is the 
very agency responsible for the New Orleans levee system. Assistant 
Secretary of the Army Michael Parker was even fired for accusing the 
Bush Administration of failing to adequately fund the Corp of Engineers 
before Katrina struck.

  Natural disasters are a fact of life in this country. Hurricanes, 
tornadoes and earthquakes are just some of the eventualities that will 
inevitably occur and need to be dealt with. Over the past decade, FEMA 
has responded to more than 500 such disasters with varying degrees of 
effectiveness. But Katrina has provided its first major test since 
September 11. The repercussions of the failure of that test are 
staggering.
  Going forward, I believe we need to create a bipartisan, national 
commission, similar to the 9/11 Commission, to provide an objective 
look at what went wrong and to make recommendations to repair what is 
clearly a broken system. Doing so is essential to restoring the 
confidence of the American people in our government's ability to 
respond to a crisis on American soil and to keep them safe. The people 
of the Gulf Coast have demanded answers to their questions and we owe 
them that.
  There is also much more to be said about what this catastrophe has to 
reveal about the problems of race and class in America. It is in some 
way illustrative of this Administration's neglect of the less fortunate 
that those in the worst situations after this storm are the poorest and 
most disenfranchised populations--precisely the people this 
Administration's policies have, at best, callously ignored.
  But social justice is a conversation for a later time. For now, we 
must focus on the immediate task at hand. Our duty is to do everything 
we can for the victims of this disaster and to rebuild the Gulf Coast. 
We begin tonight with this modest appropriation of $10.5 billion. 
Hundreds of billions more are certain to follow. The money will pay for 
the finest clean up possible, but, in the end, it will not change the 
reality that things did not have to happen this way.

                          ____________________