[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 118 (Tuesday, September 20, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10207-S10210]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   KATRINA'S DISPLACED SCHOOLCHILDREN

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I will talk this morning about helping 
all of Katrina's displaced schoolchildren. Each weekend when I go home 
to Tennessee, the people who elected me teach me about how we should be 
doing our jobs in Washington, DC. This is not a lesson they shout from 
the rooftops. It is a lesson they live by their own example, and we 
would be wise to follow.
  Two weeks ago in Maryville, my hometown, it was Al Gore flying a 
planeload of evacuees from New Orleans into one of Tennessee's most 
Republican counties. Nobody asked about anybody's politics. Everybody 
just pitched in to help.
  Last weekend, members of the church where I am an elder, Westminster 
Presbyterian Church in Nashville, sent $80,000 and a truckload of 
clothes and Clorox to southern Mississippi. ``The Presbyterians are 
here,'' one grateful Mississippi man relayed to his friends on his cell 
phone to say, ``and they have Clorox.'' When the Clorox was passed out, 
nobody asked if anybody was a Presbyterian.
  And now this Sunday, the headline in the Tennessean, the Nashville 
newspaper, was:

       Private schools Welcome Those Displaced by Katrina.

  According to the newspaper:

       A growing number of private schools in Middle Tennessee [in 
     the Nashville area] . . . have volunteered to help students 
     displaced by Katrina. Many of them are also waiving or 
     drastically discounting tuition and fees for these students 
     and some also accept evacuees from public schools.

  Continuing the quote, ``These children are in crisis. They have been 
displaced, but they have found a home,'' said the principal of Father 
Ryan High School who has accepted 20 students and is trying to 
accommodate every student who shows up.

  Father Ryan High School is waiving the $6,880 tuition, the $350 
activity fee, and the $500 in books for displaced students it simply 
calls ``transfers.'' ``It's not all about money,'' said the principal. 
``There is no amount of money that equals being family,'' he said.
  Public schools, by law, have to accept all children. And Tennessee's 
public schools have made room for more than 3,000 of Katrina's 
displaced school children.
  Our public schools have been greatly helped by these private schools, 
who do not have to accept anybody. In Tennessee, private schools have 
accepted at least 400 students, and probably many more.
  ``We couldn't sit quietly and do nothing. We felt a need to reach 
out,'' said the headmaster of Webb school in Bell Buckle, which is 
waiving the $29,500 room and board for up to 30 students. ``No one 
flinched. Everybody just responded with, what can we do to help?'' said 
the headmaster at Webb school in Bell Buckle.
  Especially in Memphis and Shelby County, where so many displaced 
students have gone up the Mississippi River from New Orleans, the 
willingness of private schools to accept these students is a huge help 
to overcrowded public schools.
  In Baton Rouge, according to a report this morning on National Public 
Radio, there are 5,000 to 10,000 of these displaced private school 
students who have no school to attend. To accommodate them, the 
Catholic Diocese in Baton Rouge is struggling to establish satellite 
schools, some located great distances away, which these students will 
have to attend at night.
  These private schools that reach out are filling a huge need because 
the four Louisiana parishes hit the hardest had nearly one-third, or 
61,000, of their 187,000 students in private schools, according to the 
U.S. Department of Education.
  That is the story and the lesson from Tennessee.
  The story in Washington last weekend, unfortunately, was different. 
According to Saturday's Washington Post, when the President proposed 
temporary emergency disaster legislation that would help all of 
Katrina's 372,000 displaced school children during the rest of this 
school year, the Senator from Massachusetts and some teachers' unions 
objected. Senator Kennedy said:

       I am extremely disappointed that [the President] has 
     proposed this relief using such a politically charged 
     approach. This is not [the] time for a partisan political 
     debate on vouchers.

  I absolutely agree with that last sentence. This is not the time for 
a partisan political debate on vouchers.
  This is the time for those of us in the Senate to do what Tennesseans 
and Americans all across our country are doing: opening our arms and 
asking what we can do to help all displaced children not just some 
school children.
  As the Presiding Officer knows so well, Katrina displaced 20 times 
more families than any natural disaster in the history of the Federal 
Emergency Management Agency. Mr. President, 372,000 of those displaced 
persons are children who were just beginning the K-12 school year, and 
73,000 more are college students.
  The President has proposed $2.6 billion in funding for students in 
elementary and secondary schools and colleges. Under the President's 
proposal, colleges and universities would receive $1,000 for each 
displaced student enrolled; no person in an affected area in Louisiana, 
Mississippi, or Alabama would have to pay interest on their student 
loans for the next 6 months; public school districts would receive up 
to 90 percent of the State's per-pupil expenditure, up to $7,500 per 
student; and $488 million would go to help displaced students who 
attend private schools.
  The President is not throwing out a lifeline to just some displaced 
students. He is trying to help them all. The private schools in 
Tennessee are not turning their backs. They are opening their arms. 
Katrina did not discriminate among children and neither should we. The 
only politically charged approaches around here are coming from those 
who oppose helping every child.
  For Heaven's sake, this is not the beginning of some big, new voucher 
program. It is the beginning, hopefully, of a big, new 1-year effort to 
help children who are in desperate trouble. The best way to do it, in 
most cases, is simply to let the money follow the child or the person 
who needs help.
  We have already approved vouchers that follow displaced persons for 
housing in this exceptional case. Food stamps are vouchers, and they 
are helping in this exceptional case. No one is suggesting a displaced 
mother cannot take her Federal daycare voucher to a Catholic daycare 
center in these exceptional cases. No one is suggesting we cannot pay 
Boston College or Harvard University $1,000 for enrolling a displaced 
student who was set to attend Loyola or Xavier in New Orleans.
  Scholars agree there is no constitutional issue here. So are we going 
to stand here and argue about old ideologies and leave these displaced 
children standing on the levee because the only doors that are open to 
them for this 1 year happen to be to a private school?
  At the end of World War II, a grateful Nation enacted the GI bill, 
giving veterans scholarships for college. A lot of veterans had these 
vouchers for college but no high school degree. So thousands of 
veterans took their GI vouchers to Catholic high schools to earn their 
high school diploma. That did not create a big, new voucher program for 
high schools, this will not either. This is a one year exceptional 
disaster relief program for kids from the gulf coast who desperately 
need help.

  The public schools are brimming over. They need help from private 
schools. I hope those who are objecting to helping all displaced school 
children will think again. We can have our debates about vouchers next 
year when the floodwaters subside and the schools are open again. Right 
now we need to be throwing out every lifeline we can for all of 
Katrina's displaced schoolchildren, not just some.
  Mr. President, in Time magazine this week, there is a story on this 
subject. It quotes Andrew Rotherman, a codirector of a think tank here 
and a former Clinton education adviser. Mr. Rotherman, who is not a fan 
of public school vouchers, says:


[[Page S10208]]


       As a temporary initiative to help families in exceptional 
     circumstances, it's reasonable.

  He is talking about the President's proposal. He says:

       But if they use this disaster as a beachhead to establish a 
     longstanding voucher program in the Gulf region, it would be 
     wildly inappropriate.

  I would agree. This is a temporary initiative to help families in 
exceptional instances.
  Time goes on to say:

       For evacuees, the constitutionality of assistance matters 
     far less than the assistance itself. The day before Katrina 
     hit, Albert and Anne Betz moved with Jane Todd, 10, and Owen, 
     7, out of soon-to-be-drowned Pass Christian, Miss., and into 
     a condo in Sandestin, Fla. Back home, Anne had taught at the 
     children's private Episcopal school, but the couple heard 
     that the best schools near Sandestin were public and were 
     happy with the one to which their kids were assigned. Within 
     days, however, Anne received a letter from the Walton County 
     School District stating that the onslaught of evacuees had 
     caused overcrowding, and her children would have to study 
     elsewhere. Now they are bused daily to one school, only to be 
     placed on a second bus to another. At this point, all Anne is 
     asking for is normality. ``It does not matter if it's private 
     or public school,'' she says. ``The most important thing is 
     my children's happiness.''

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
the entire article from Time, and also the story from Sunday's 
Nashville Tennessean about the generosity of private schools all across 
Tennessee. I hope the example they are setting will be a good lesson 
for all of us in this Chamber.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                  [From Time Magazine, Sept. 19, 2005]

                    Public Bailout. Private Agenda?

                          (By David Van Biema)

       Houston Independent School District superintendent Abelardo 
     Saavedra's week started poorly, got worse and then, thanks to 
     the healing powers of federal dollars, took a turn toward the 
     jubilant. Saavedra's 305 schools are educating more of the 
     Gulf Coast's evacuee students than any other district in 
     Texas, which in turn is housing more evacuees than any other 
     state. On Tuesday, all that generosity seemed to backfire 
     when a group of Katrina kids billeted in the Astrodome 
     rumbled with local Texans at one of Saavedra's schools, 
     sending five students to jail and three to a hospital. The 
     scene did not recur, but by Thursday, Saavedra had an even 
     greater problem: math. The long-term cost of serving 4,700 
     evacuee students, times an average estimated annual student 
     cost of $7,500, equals a total of $35.2 million--and the pre-
     hurricane Bush Administration commitment was only 9% of pupil 
     cost.
       On Friday, however, Saavedra was ecstatic. At a press 
     conference in one of the Houston district's middle schools, 
     Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced that the 
     Federal Government would request $2.6 billion from Congress 
     to pay 90% of the average cost of educating each Katrina 
     student, whether publicly or privately, up to a ceiling of 
     $7,500 apiece. ``From 9% to 90%,'' Saavedra said afterward, 
     with the dazed elation of a lottery winner.
       Spellings' announcement had a lot of school administrators 
     smiling--although a key component angered some of the 
     legislators who will eventually have to vote on it. A 
     proposed set-aside of $488 million for private schools 
     (which, if private-leaning evacuees seek out the kind of 
     education they left behind, would be mostly Catholic) 
     represents a historic federal bankrolling of those 
     institutions and their overtly religious subset, and it drew 
     quick fire from Democrats like Massachusetts Senator Edward 
     Kennedy. He pronounced himself ``disappointed'' that ``[Bush] 
     has proposed. . . relief using such a politically charged 
     approach,'' while California Representative George Miller 
     complained that ``to launch a new private-school voucher 
     program in the midst of a disaster response creates a 
     quagmire that could hinder rather than expedite the return to 
     school for tens of thousands of students.''
       The ramifications of Spellings' bombshell will take months, 
     if not years, to sort out, but most agree that a major 
     federal foray into emergency school funding was desperately 
     needed. The fate of 372,000 displaced children is at least as 
     important to the nation as the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast, 
     and unlike the payment of rebuilding costs, education isn't a 
     choice--it's a government guarantee. Yet for days it appeared 
     the feds might foist much of the obligation on state 
     school systems, 47 of which are hosting Katrina students. 
     Most evaluated the problem and decided to teach first and 
     ask questions later. ``If that 6-year-old kid coming off 
     that transport plane was yours, how would you want him 
     taken care of?'' Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee asked 
     TIME. Huckabee hopes for federal reimbursement, ``but if 
     not, we will have done the right thing, and I believe we 
     will have no regrets about how we handled matters.''
       But Huckabee was tutoring only 1,755 Katrina kids. Texas 
     has 41,000, with 19,000 more expected to arrive. Those 
     numbers left some state officials skeptical that the feds 
     would really come through. Comptroller Carole Strayhorn, who 
     will run against incumbent Rick Perry in the state's 
     Republican gubernatorial primary, challenged him to ask the 
     legislature for $1.2 billion in hurricane-related funds. (He 
     declined.) Texas educators are worried that they will be 
     punished in the form of even less federal cash if Katrina's 
     influx keeps them from meeting the conditions of Bush's No 
     Child Left Behind Act and an earlier law that benefits the 
     children of the homeless.
       Spellings' proposal eased those tensions while creating 
     others, most sharply over the possible erosion of the church-
     and-state barrier. Her department noted that in Louisiana's 
     flood-impacted communities, 25% of the students had been 
     enrolled in private schools--should government simply ignore 
     them? ``We are not provoking a voucher debate,'' Spellings 
     contended, ``as much as trying to provide aid for these 
     displaced families, whether they have been in private schools 
     or public schools.'' Her proposal seems carefully crafted to 
     avoid substantive constitutional objections. Although it 
     calls for the distribution of the public-school funds 
     primarily through districts, the private-school money is 
     directed not to schools but to families, in keeping with the 
     concerns of the 2002 Supreme Court decision allowing private-
     school vouchers so long as the parents retain a ``true 
     private choice'' as to where their children learn.
       Nonetheless, the proposal represents a major, if legal, 
     shift toward government activism. According to Chester E. 
     Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, 
     which promotes school reforms, the number of children 
     receiving government money for private school is roughly 
     30,000, with a ``handful'' involving federal funds. The 
     Spellings plan assumes roughly 60,000 federally funded 
     private-school placements. Finn, an Assistant Education 
     Secretary under Ronald Reagan, approves of it as 
     ``compassionate and constitutional.'' Andrew Rotherman, a co-
     director of a think tank called the Education Sector and a 
     former Clinton education adviser, says the proposal's 
     eventual legitimacy may depend on details Spellings has not 
     yet made available. ``As a temporary initiative to help 
     families in exceptional circumstances, it's reasonable,'' he 
     says. ``But if they use this disaster as a beachhead to 
     establish a longstanding voucher program in the Gulf [Coast] 
     region, it would be wildly inappropriate.''
       For evacuees, the constitutionality of assistance matters 
     far less than the assistance itself. The day before Katrina 
     hit, Albert and Anne Betz moved with Jane Todd, 10, and Owen, 
     7, out of soon-to-be drowned Pass Christian, Miss., and into 
     a condo in Sandestin, Fla. Back home, Anne had taught at the 
     children's private Episcopal school, but the couple heard 
     that the best schools near Sandestin were public and were 
     happy with the one to which their kids were assigned. Within 
     days, however, Anne received a letter from the Walton County 
     School District stating that the onslaught of evacuees had 
     caused overcrowding, and her children would have to study 
     elsewhere. Now they are bused daily to one school, only to be 
     placed on a second bus to another. At this point, all Anne is 
     asking for is normalcy. ``It does not matter if it's private 
     or public school,'' she says. ``The most important thing is 
     my children's happiness.''
                                  ____


                 [From the Tennessean, Sept. 18, 2005]

           Private Schools Welcome Those Displaced By Katrina

                          (By Claudette Riley)

       Teresa Castellon is more than 500 miles from her parents, 
     her friends, her flooded New Orleans home and the now-closed 
     private school she was attending just three weeks ago.
       The sophomore was eager to go back to class. But, after 
     years of going to private schools--and with so much of the 
     rest of her life up in the air--she just couldn't handle 
     making the switch to public schools right now.
       Luckily, she didn't have to.
       A growing number of private schools in Middle Tennessee, 
     including the prestigious Webb School that Teresa now 
     attends, have volunteered to accept students displaced by 
     Hurricane Katrina. Many of them also are either waiving or 
     drastically discounting tuition and fees for these students, 
     and some also accept evacuees from public schools.
       ``It just happened immediately. They're just really 
     welcoming and accepting,'' said Teresa, 15, one of four 
     evacuees now attending the private boarding school for grades 
     6-12. ``The students and teachers are very nice and always 
     want to help us with whatever we need.''
       At lease 50 private schools in Tennessee--including the 22 
     Catholic elementary, middle and high schools in the 
     Midstate--have expressed a willingness to help. No one is 
     required to track displaced students who enroll in private 
     schools statewide, but 390 have enrolled in the dozen or so 
     schools that reported their numbers to the state Department 
     of Education.
       Some schools have room only for a few. Others, including 
     Father Ryan High School in Nashville, are trying to 
     accommodate all who show up.
       ``Our school's mission is to be an example of the living 
     gospel, and these children are in crisis. They have been 
     displaced, but they have found a home,'' said Jim McIntyre, 
     principal of the 995-student Father Ryan

[[Page S10209]]

     High, which has 20 displaced students. ``Even though we don't 
     know these people, we know these people. We are these 
     people.''
       The high school is waiving the $6,880 tuition, the $350 
     activity fee and the $400 to $600 in books for displaced 
     students it simply calls ``transfers.''
       ``It's not all about money. There's no amount of money that 
     equals being family,'' he said, noting that the school has 
     accepted Catholic and non-Catholic students. ``I've told 
     these families that they're a blessing to us because they're 
     giving us a chance to live our mission.''
       Private schools don't fall under the federal law that 
     requires public schools to immediately enroll displaced 
     students and give them busing, free meals and any required 
     services. However, many private schools are opening their 
     doors and going the extra mile anyway.
       ``We couldn't sit quietly and do nothing. We felt a need to 
     reach out,'' said Albert Cauz, headmaster of Webb School, 
     which is waiving the $29,500 room and board for up to 30 
     students. ``No one flinched. Everybody just responded with 
     `What can we do to help?' ''
       The boarding school south of Nashville even allowed Teresa 
     Castellon's little sister, Madeline, to stay in her private 
     dorm room even though she's too young to attend the school. 
     The fourth-grader attends nearby Cascade Elementary and has 
     found a surrogate family in the Webb faculty members, who 
     regularly invite her to dinner and take her on outings.
       ``I like it here,'' said Madeline, 9, who misses her 
     parents, involved in salvaging and rebuilding their home in 
     New Orleans.
       The private schools that do reach out are filling a huge 
     need because the four Louisiana parishes hardest hit by the 
     storm had an above-average number of students enrolled in 
     private school. They had 61,000 of the 187,000 students 
     there, or roughly 32% of students in kindergarten through 
     grade 12, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
       Shane Persich, 17, said his New Orleans school, Brother 
     Martin High, is underwater and he appreciated being able to 
     go to Father Ryan. He started his senior year at the all-boys 
     school shortly before his family evacuated and ended up in 
     Nashville, where they're staying with family.
       ``I like it a lot but sometimes after class you get a 
     little lonely. I do. And you want to go home but then you 
     don't want to be home.'' he said, adding that his home has 
     severe wind damage. ``Your senior year you're supposed to 
     rule the school. Now it's like starting all over again.''
       Many displaced students who enroll in private and public 
     schools don't have access to their medical or academic 
     records so counselors have to help them reconstruct their 
     transcripts and find classes they need to graduate.
       ``We want to get their schedule identical to the one they 
     had. We don't know if they're going to be here on week, two 
     weeks or a year,'' said Connie Hansom, Father Ryan's director 
     of admission, who assigns two students ambassadors to help 
     each displaced student. ``We do whatever we can do to make 
     them feel a part. We don't want them to stand out.''
       Olivia Milton, a sophomore at Father Ryan, will soon return 
     to Covington, La, because her all-girls Catholic high school 
     is reopening and taking in students from surrounding high 
     schools. She said her time at Father Ryan and the way she was 
     welcomed will help her reach out to the displaced students 
     who transfer into her high school back home.
       ``I'll get to return the favor,'' said Olivia, 15, who will 
     be back in Louisiana in the coming weeks. ``I like it a lot 
     here. I don't want to go back.''

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 2 minutes remaining.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, on Thursday, at 3 o'clock, the Education Subcommittee 
of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will be holding 
a hearing on helping all of Katrina's displaced schoolchildren, with 
the hopes that we can come up with a temporary exceptional way to do 
this, not as a way of establishing a long-term change in Federal 
policy, but as a way of helping all schoolchildren today who were 
displaced by Katrina who need help--whether they are going to public 
schools or private schools.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina is recognized.
  Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, we have all been saddened to see the 
images of Hurricane Katrina's devastation. I know the Presiding Officer 
has seen more of these images than perhaps anyone in the Senate. We 
have seen images of children who have lost their parents and families 
who have lost their homes. These images break the heart of every 
American.
  Hurricane Katrina created an area of destruction that is 90,000 
square miles, roughly the size of Great Britain. Homes have been 
leveled, roads are unusable, bridges have crumbled, and hundreds of 
thousands of lives will be forever changed.
  As the chairman of the Commerce Committee's Disaster Prediction and 
Prevention Subcommittee, I traveled with the Coast Guard to the gulf 
coast earlier this month. We viewed the coasts of Mississippi, Alabama, 
and Louisiana.
  What became immediately clear to me was that television cannot 
accurately convey what happened. The devastation is massive and 
comprehensive. Seeing a home demolished on television begins to 
communicate the tragedy, but seeing 60 to 70 miles of that repeated 
over and over again is heartbreaking and almost impossible to 
comprehend.
  As we can see from these slides, beginning in New Orleans, during the 
helicopter trip, from a distance, we could see the waters covering 
everywhere. From a few feet above the water, you could also smell the 
contamination from oil and sewage. It is unbelievable what the folks 
there are having to deal with.
  To continue, at the time, the water was still up to the rooftops. The 
Coast Guard captain who was with me told me when they first arrived the 
day after the hurricane, about 70 percent of these roofs had people on 
them who needed to be rescued.
  We became very aware that we had two disasters: in New Orleans, 
continued flooding; and along the entire coast of Mississippi, it was 
as though a hand had wiped everything off a table. Everything was 
completely destroyed. Not a house along the beaches was either there or 
inhabitable. And we continued to see the same thing all along the 
coast.
  Again, television can capture one or two homes, but the concretelike 
``gravestones'' showed where homes used to be, and trees are already 
dying from the saltwater, which will damage the whole coastal area for 
many years to come.
  These are completely different disasters and different challenges for 
our first responders.
  In Mississippi, the houses themselves have been demolished by the 
wind and storm, as we can see. In New Orleans, the flooding has 
severely damaged the homes.
  One thing both locations have in common is that the homes will never 
again be inhabitable. The wind-damaged homes, those that still stand, 
will likely be declared a complete loss.
  In New Orleans, the homes that were flooded are permanently damaged 
and are beyond repair.
  One of the positive stories that is often lost in this tragedy is the 
amazing work performed by first responders, especially those from the 
U.S. Coast Guard.
  Working hours on end in awful conditions, they rescued thousands of 
people and are, without question, true heroes. I visited the Coast 
Guard aviation training center in Mobile, AL, which was transformed 
from a few hundred personnel before the storm to nearly 1,200 personnel 
after the storm. The Coast Guard sent people from all around the Nation 
to run rescue operations 24 hours a day. Coast Guardsmen from all over 
the Nation, as far away as Alaska, answered the call and came to the 
rescue of their fellow citizens. To date, first responders have been 
responsible for saving approximately 49,000 lives, 33,000 by the Coast 
Guard alone. That is more than six times the number they saved in all 
of 2004.
  The impact to the coast is going to be a long-term issue. The storm 
has had a significant impact on the trees in the region. You can see 
significant portions of the area along the coastline where trees are 
dead. These trees were a natural obstacle to erosion, and now that 
protection will be missing for a number of years. Boats can be seen 
among the trees far inland. The gulf coast is our Nation's largest 
provider of shrimp and oysters. Their way of life has been destroyed. 
It was clear from the boats I saw stranded inland, sometimes on 
rooftops, that the gulf's fishing industry will need years to recover. 
But while Hurricane Katrina was certainly one of the worst disasters to 
ever hit our Nation, it has also brought out the greatest outpouring of 
compassion from American citizens.
  In my State of South Carolina, families have opened their wallets and 
homes to affected people. Our State knows all too well the tragic 
effects hurricanes can bring, and we have often been the recipient of 
help from

[[Page S10210]]

other States. We remember the show of support from the gulf when we 
were struck by Hurricane Hugo, and South Carolinians have not been 
hesitant to come to the gulf's rescue. Well over 2,000 South Carolina 
families have contacted our Red Cross to offer whatever assistance is 
needed. It is now estimated that up to 5,000 evacuees are being hosted 
in South Carolina, either by individual families or in shelters such as 
the Palmetto Expo Center in Greenville.
  The South Carolina National Guard has also joined in the relief 
effort. Nearly 350 of them have been to the gulf to help. Countless 
churches and civic organizations have taken their own initiatives to 
organize relief efforts. From fundraising drives to collections and 
delivery of supplies, to driving to the region to volunteer in any 
capacity needed, the people of South Carolina have risen to the 
occasion. This show of support is so encouraging to me about our State 
and the state of our Nation. Americans are caring and compassionate, 
and we will work side by side with our fellow citizens to rebuild and 
bring hope back to the gulf coast.
  This afternoon my Subcommittee on Disaster Prevention and Prediction 
will be hearing from the Director of the National Hurricane Center and 
witnesses from the gulf coast region on what the Government got right 
in advance of the storm and how we can replicate that in the future to 
protect our Nation's coastal communities. Our most powerful defense 
against hurricanes is accurate prediction and effective evacuation. I 
look forward to their testimony and am confident it will provide 
important lessons for America's emergency planners.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sununu). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. NELSON of Nebraska. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 
the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________