[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 124 (Thursday, September 29, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H8633-H8639]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        DISCUSSING THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANES KATRINA AND RITA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kuhl of New York). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) 
is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to 
address my colleagues tonight and address this House of 
Representatives. As I sat and listened to the Chairman of the Committee 
on Armed Services, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), I cannot 
resist the sense of duty and obligation to weigh in on some of his 
remarks that he made with regard to General Myers as chairman of the 
Joint Chiefs of Staff.
  Of course, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) has worked very 
closely with General Myers and he knows him far better than I do. My 
work in relationship there has been not as deep, but I have been as 
impressed as the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) has been with 
Richard Myers, the chairman of our Joint Chiefs, and with his vision 
and his ability to see beyond the horizon, as the gentleman said.
  I also had the privilege of meeting General John Kelly over in Iraq 
before the operation that ended the battle of Fallujah, and I was 
impressed with his dedication and his vision and his understanding of 
who our enemy was and what needed to be done, and I was pleased to sit 
here tonight and hear the remarks made by the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Hunter), honoring the family, the family commitment to the 
military and to the defense of this fine Nation that was made by 
General John Kelly and his children.
  Mr. Speaker, let me shift to the subject matter that I asked to speak 
about tonight and that is the subject matter that I have come to call 
``Katrita.'' We have been here on this floor a couple of hours in the 
past 2 weeks, and I have spoken at great length about Katrina and, in 
these past few days, we have seen the aftermath now of Hurricane Rita. 
I just merge them together, because essentially they did merge 
together, Mr. Speaker, as Katrina hit New Orleans and points on the 
east and Rita hit points to the west of New Orleans on over into the 
bay and into Texas, so they have crossed those lines and the damage of 
the two hurricanes have overlapped on each other.
  When I take Katrina on the one side and Rita on the other side and 
merge them together I get Katrita. It is the largest natural disaster I 
believe that this Nation has ever seen. We are fortunate that it has 
not been the largest loss of life, although we mourn those who we have 
lost, and we are still in the process of recovery. But this financial 
loss and the term of time that will be required for reconstruction I 
think is the most devastating that America has seen. We are going to 
need to pull together on this.
  I am well aware that there are Members of Congress who have districts

[[Page H8634]]

that were hit hard by the dual hurricanes, and they are the most 
sensitive to these issues. I am up in the upper Midwest, although I 
have made my trip down there and much of my staff has been down there, 
and in fact, I have a staff person there today who will be there for 
some time. We want to lend a good hand to the people in the gulf coast 
intelligently and responsibly.
  Before I get into that in any great depth, I will be happy to yield 
the floor to one of those individuals who does have constituents in the 
area, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe).

                              {time}  1845

  Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
King) for yielding and for hosting this hour to discuss these important 
issues.
  When the two ladies of the gulf came in to Southeast Texas and 
southwestern Louisiana just in the last few weeks, in some respect the 
whole area and our attitude about natural disasters changed. As you 
mentioned, this is not the greatest loss of life regarding hurricanes. 
In fact, the greatest disaster that occurred in American history 
occurred in the year 1900 when ``the storm'' as it was called came 
across Galveston, Texas, that island, and killed at least 8,000 people, 
maybe even 12,000 people.
  Times have changed a great deal because we now follow those 
hurricanes as our weather forecasters did with the two ladies of the 
gulf, Katrina, and more recently, Rita.
  As you know, the folks in Louisiana disbursed throughout the United 
States but many, probably most came to Texas. And Texas is on the other 
side of the Savine River, and many of those people stopped off in my 
congressional district in Beaumont. Even this past week before Rita 
hit, there was still 15,000 people from Louisiana in Jefferson County 
where Beaumont, Texas is. Many of them went on further to Houston which 
is about 90 miles away.
  The good folks in Texas and other parts of the country have tried to 
take care of those displaced citizens the best they can. Just last 
week, almost a week ago Hurricane Rita came down hurricane alley and 
hit us in Jefferson County and Liberty County and Harris County, three 
counties that I represent or portions of these three counties.
  We did some good things. I say ``we,'' the government officials, 
local officials, Federal officials, and the community did some good 
things before Hurricane Rita came ashore. Of course, they were aware of 
the fact that there was a hurricane coming so there was an evacuation 
plan implemented. There was an expectation that about a million people 
would evacuate southeast Texas and move further west into other parts 
of Texas, but the truth of the matter was there was over 2\1/2\ million 
people evacuated.
  By any imagination this would have been a large scale military 
operation in time of war. Moving 2\1/2\ million people logistically is 
a massive undertaking. The mayor of the City of Houston, Bill White, 
and the county judge, which is our county president, Robert Eccles, did 
a tremendous job moving people and evacuating people. And so, those 
people are coming back into southeast Texas as we speak.
  The counties that I represent, Jefferson County, is still without 
power tonight. It has been almost a week. Still without water. It has 
been almost a week. The same is true in parts of Liberty County. As you 
know, in southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana from New Orleans to 
Corpus Christie, Texas, 60 percent of the Nation's gasoline is refined 
in that one area. In Port Arthur, Texas, which was hit by Hurricane 
Rita, 27 percent of the gasoline is refined in that one small community 
for the whole United States. And because of the Katrina and Rita, 
several of these refineries have had to shut down. Many of those 
refineries have never shut down since the day they opened some 20, 25 
years ago. Those refineries invented the phrase of working 24 hours a 
day, 7 days a week, many years ago. It takes several days to get these 
refineries up and running once again.
  I will mention something about the refineries momentarily. But for 
the most part, there was no damage to these refineries that cannot be 
repaired in just a few days, but they are missing a power source to 
start up again.
  The county of Jefferson County, Beaumont and Port Arthur, evacuated 
about 90 percent of the people who lived there. Most of them are still 
displaced in parts of Texas, I think some of them are have gone to Iowa 
and looking at Iowa for the first time in their lives. They, of course, 
want to come home.
  The situation there now after a week, local officials are there 
trying to maintain, of course, some order. For the most part there has 
been very little looting, and our first responders are spending 12 
hours a day working in shifts. The biggest problem our first responders 
have is that they are sleeping in their police cars. Of course, they 
have no electricity. They have no air conditioning and they are doing a 
marvelous job. It is interesting to note that not one member of the 
Beaumont Police Department left town during Hurricane Rita.
  Something remarkable occurred and I think it is worthy to note that 
the port of Beaumont ships most of the military cargo to Iraq and 
Afghanistan. Docked in the Port of Beaumont at the time of the 
hurricane was the Cape Victory and the Cape Vincent, two cargo ships 
that transport military cargo to Iraq and Afghanistan.
  They were all expecting a surge of water to not only take over Port 
Arthur but further north, Beaumont as well. So the mayor and the first 
responders were concerned about their vehicles, what to do with them 
because they were doing to need them as soon as the hurricane was over. 
So the two captains of the Cape Victory and the Cape Vincent and the 
mayor, Mayor Guy Goodson, came up with the idea to put all of these 
vehicles on the two cargo ships. One does not think of seeking safety 
on a ship during a hurricane, but that is exactly what happened.
  So they, in just a few minutes, made the decision and started within 
an hour without any red tape, without any permission, without any 
bureaucracy, without any committee meetings, just loading those two 
ships with police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, fire equipment, front-
end loaders, police helicopters and dump trucks from several 
surrounding towns. Tug boats went into operation during the hurricane 
to secure the ships, and as soon as the hurricane passed by those 
vehicles were ready to be used and they are being used and they were 
all taken care of in a very safe manner.
  We are thankful to these two salty sea captains for coming up with 
that idea and protecting the first responders there.
  I do want to thank the President for coming down to my district and 
viewing the situation firsthand. He did so in Louisiana, came into 
Texas. He had a meeting with the local officials and the first 
responders. And then he flew over the entire area in a helicopter to 
see southeast Texas and of course Louisiana as well.
  The need for American petroleum and natural gas and dependence on 
ourselves could not be more evident in this hurricane, in these last 
two hurricanes.
  We in this country for various reasons have not built a new 
refineries since over 25 years ago. It is not economically profitable 
to do so so there has not been any. We are now 60 percent dependent on 
foreign crude oil in the United States, and every day we take more and 
more away from our own selves and we have to import crude oil to make 
sure that the American public has gasoline.
  These two disasters are evident that we need to do something about 
being energy self-sufficient. Most of our refineries are in southeast 
Texas, southwest Louisiana. Most of the offshore rigs are in the gulf 
in the same area. That is why it is important in my opinion that we 
drill in other parts offshore, not just off the coasts of Louisiana and 
Texas but even further east, even off the coast of Florida, the East 
Coast and West Coast as well. We are the only major power in the world 
that has the policy of not drilling off our own shores.
  People complain and are concerned, and that is rightfully so about 
the price of gasoline, certainly they should be, and we have to find a 
place to refine that crude oil and we also must find a way to produce 
crude oil as well.

[[Page H8635]]

  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I would pose a 
question to the gentleman, as the gentleman raised the issue with the 
natural gas and oil drilling that goes on in the gulf, I have seen the 
map of where those rigs are, the platforms that are out there, and what 
I cannot see when I go down there along that shore and what I cannot 
seen when I go along there and in a plane or a helicopter is any rigs. 
Can you see the rigs from the shoreline, say if you are sitting on the 
beach anywhere down there?
  Mr. POE. Well, of course they are not on a beach and the only way you 
could ever see is them on a clear night you could sometimes see the 
lights from the rigs that are offshore; but generally speaking, in the 
daytime you cannot see them at all.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I would pose a follow-up question. Does the 
gentleman have any idea why it is some folks oppose the drilling 
offshore when it is out of sight?
  Mr. POE. I do not understand why. I think, in my own opinion, there 
is a certain fear and panic about offshore drilling that is unfounded. 
Those folks that can drill offshore today can do it in a very 
environmentally clean manner. The best example is probably using the 
North Sea. The roughest seas in the world are in the North Sea. And the 
North Sea has numerous offshore rigs. Most of them built by, of course, 
Texans, and they can do so in a safe manner.
  We can drill offshore in a safe manner. We can drill in an 
environmentally safe manner. No one wants polluted air or water. I 
think the day has come now where we have to get rid of the unnecessary 
and abusive regulations so we can drill offshore. It will not only 
bring us natural gas, crude oil for gasoline, but it will bring an 
income to the American public, because when the Federal Government 
leases offshore, oil companies pay for those leases.
  And some estimate that the American Treasury could receive up to $7 
billion a year by leasing in those areas where we have not leased 
before.
  So it is a decision that the American public is going to have to 
make, depending on foreign gas, natural gas, depending on foreign crude 
oil or drill offshore; and I think we should drill in numerous places. 
And it is a security issue because as you know when those hurricanes 
get in the gulf, they have to go somewhere. And we got all those rigs 
in one place, the refineries in one place as we have seen, it could 
have been a whole lot worse and the country could be in a whole lot 
worse shape just because of the energy and the lack of offshore 
drilling.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I am advised that the last oil spill 
we had in any offshore drilling for oil was 1969. I do not know if the 
gentleman can confirm that, but in that question could the gentleman 
also respond to the question of, does the gentleman know if there has 
ever been a spill of natural gas drilling offshore? And if it did 
spill, would it kind of look like the gas that is boiling up out of the 
water in New Orleans where it would just dissipate into the air and is 
there a reason to be concerned, even if we were irresponsible with 
regard to natural gas drilling?
  Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, as far as I know there has not been any major 
problems. We know we have had these two hurricanes and with very little 
environmental impact with the offshore rigs. The refineries are built 
very, very well. The refineries knew that the hurricanes were coming. 
They started burning the fuel that was in the pipe so there would not 
be any pipe disasters.
  Just to mention as a side note, one-third of the pipelines in the 
United States go right through my congressional district. They go to 
all parts of the United States, but one-third are through that 
congressional district. It is all very highly concentrated, but we can 
proceed with a safe energy policy. And like I said, the American public 
has to make that decision, and I hope they make the right decision 
which would be that we become more self-sufficient on energy.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for coming to 
the floor to stand up and let America and the Speaker know the 
circumstances in southern Texas and how that has impacted you all down 
there. I will pick up on the flow of this.
  I had the privilege of going down there very early. In fact, my 
district director was on the ground near New Orleans on an air base on 
Labor Day which was just barely in the aftermath of the hurricane. It 
was important, I thought, to have someone down there to see what was 
going on so we could measure the magnitude of the disaster down.
  He went down with a KC-135 load of Air Force MP's out of Colorado and 
reported back to me immediately. From what he saw down there, he said 
he thought there was so much military activity on Labor Day that it 
reminded him of the DaNang base during Vietnam when he was there.
  So that gave me a sense of how much military effort there was even 
that early, and yet the public does not have the perception that there 
was a Federal response that was nearly as aggressive or as 
comprehensive as it actually was.
  I would say further that I did not wait. The following week I was 
there on the eleventh and twelfth of September. I came in very early on 
that Sunday morning. I got a good look at much of what was going on and 
went up in a Black Hawk helicopter and flew all over New Orleans for a 
couple of hours. I went back down and had the meetings that I had asked 
for. I was given a ride over the Corps of Engineers headquarters.

                              {time}  1900

  There I entered their administrative offices where they rode out 
Hurricane Katrina, and looking at the drawings that they had and the 
maps of the area, and I had studied the elevations and the levees and 
the system that had been constructed. I had also read the reports that 
were predicting the worst-case scenario, which essentially Katrina was 
the worst-case scenario for New Orleans with the exception that maybe 
the winds could have been a little stronger, but it went in the most 
damaging path it could have. It was almost the perfect storm, and I 
will return to that description perhaps in a few moments, Mr. Speaker.
  But when I think of the immediate military response that kept the air 
bases looking like Danang with so many planes landing, we had fixed-
wing aircraft landing more often than one every minute, whether it be 
C-130s or KC-135s, cargo aircraft coming in with manpower and also with 
supplies, equipment, everything they could imagine that they could 
muster up from our military. Those fixed wing aircraft were landing on 
the runway. The military had set up their power system, and they had 
taken over the communications for the air traffic controllers which did 
not have power.
  So the military system kicked in, and they were controlling the 
fixed-wing aircraft to land one more often than every minute on the 
runway there. Then, on top of that, the helicopters were coming and 
going; and they were landing crossways of the runway, asked to yield 
the right-of-way to the planes that were landing, a very, very busy 
place on Labor Day that early after Katrina hit.
  So I would just fast forward to, in fact, exactly 7 days later when I 
found myself in a shelter in Slidell, Louisiana, visiting some of the 
people who had been evacuees from their homes and were looking for a 
place to lay their weary heads. They had set up the gymnasium there 
with perhaps 300 cots, a Red Cross-structured shelter. As I walked 
through there and visited some of the victims of the storm, I got a 
sense of the stories that they had lived through and a feel for the way 
they had been helped out and the helping hands that came from 
volunteers from all across this country, and in fact, hearing the 
stories of the traffic that was going south, while the evacuation was 
going north, people coming to help were a traffic jam themselves.
  That is the American spirit, Mr. Speaker; and in that gymnasium, I 
met a young man who was a specialist with the 711th Signal Battalion 
out of Mobile, Alabama. He was Specialist Cunningham, and I asked him, 
of course, what unit he was with. He said, 711th Signal out of Mobile, 
Alabama, sir. I said, how did you get here out of Alabama? Didn't you 
get hit by a hurricane there, too? He said, Yes, but our orders were to 
come over here and help the people that needed it worse than we did. I 
said how did you get across Mississippi? His answer was, We used 
chainsaws and we used Humvees and

[[Page H8636]]

chainsaws, and we essentially cut away across the trees that were down 
over the highway, and we drug them out of the way and we opened the 
road and worked our way over here. So they had cut all the way or 
worked their way and cleared some of the way, if not all the way, 
across Mississippi to Slidell, Louisiana, on the eastern side of the 
Louisiana border, right next to the Mississippi line.
  People from Mobile, Alabama, 300 strong, in there early, and they 
started out on Monday. That is Monday Labor Day, the same day my 
district director landed down there near New Orleans, the same day that 
the air traffic was landing, one plane more often than every minute, 
with helicopters landing in between, bringing manpower and machines and 
equipment and supplies in for people that were in need.
  Mr. Speaker, the Federal Government did provide a fast response; but 
it was a huge area, 90,000 square miles to start with; and now it has 
been added to significantly by Rita. Of course, we learned from 
Katrina; and some of the things that were in place in Texas in 
preparation for evacuees, particularly those that might come out of 
Galveston in the event of a hurricane, were very beneficial to the 
people that came from New Orleans and found themselves in Houston.
  I am quite impressed with the effort of the region and the resources 
that they pulled together and the ability that they had in the 
Astrodome to have supplies there and water and food and medicine. I 
think the report was 400 different kinds of pharmaceuticals in a 
pharmaceutical shop that was set up there along with cots and all the 
services that they needed, medical help and psychological help, and the 
list went on. Plenty of volunteers were able to take thousands of 
people into the Astrodome and have the supplies there so that it was 
orderly, clean, and neat. It was not littered.
  Apparently, the people who went to the Astrodome helped clean the 
place up. I do not know, but every time I saw a picture of that, it was 
a clean place; and whenever I saw a picture of the Superdome, it was a 
very, very filthy and littered place that appeared to have no order, 
and it was a chaotic location, as we all pretty well know by now.
  As the Committee on Government Reform meets and holds hearings and 
examines the circumstances that unfolded, I really do think that we 
need to let them do their due diligence. I think we need to let them 
listen to the testimony, and we heard the now-just-resigned director of 
FEMA give his testimony yesterday. More testimony followed today, I 
understand. It will follow in the days and weeks ahead.
  It is important that we put on record the chronology of what happened 
when, where was the storm in the path, what notices went out, what 
decisions were made at what time, who was in the position of authority, 
and at what time did they make those decisions, who did they consult 
with, what was the basis of the facts of the information, what 
equipment did they have to work with, what alternatives did they have, 
what had they done in the past history to prepare themselves for such a 
disaster.
  Certainly, it was not a surprise that a hurricane might someday hit 
of that magnitude, because that was published in the New Orleans Times-
Picayune newspaper, I believe it was in late 2002.
  I have read all those articles, and I have read the worst-case 
scenario, and I cannot believe that I would be one of the few people, 
but many, many people in that region were aware of the worst-case 
scenario, and that is essentially what transpired.
  I think it is important to let the committee do their work, the 
Committee on Government Reform, bring the witnesses forward, put their 
testimony on the record, take the documents, the supporting documents, 
and put those into the record and have the staff and the interested 
people and the public and the media be able to take a good look and 
examine the facts and then write up the scenarios.
  This committee will issue a report, and I want to reserve my judgment 
on all the things that I think went wrong until such time as I can 
point to them and say these are congressional findings, they are facts; 
and I want to base my judgment off of those facts.
  I will give, Mr. Speaker, a couple of opinions on what I think 
happened, and not to be passing previous judgment but simply to give an 
overall sketch of how it looks to me from what I have seen, what I have 
been involved in, and that is, that I think Hurricane Katrina, and Rita 
to a significantly less effect, but Katrina particularly was almost the 
perfect storm.
  It did what the director of Homeland Security said here on this 
floor, that it came in in a military fashion. If you were going to 
attack a city and you wanted to immobilize a city, what you would do is 
wipe out the communications, the power and electricity. That is the 
first thing that Katrina did. Then you would cut off all the 
transportation routes into the city, and that is what happened with the 
flooding and the roads that were taken out. Then the third thing that 
would happen would be, of course, you would attack, and that was the 
flood. The flood, when you start filling up a city like that, it 
immobilizes everything. It put everybody out of commission.
  So it was almost a perfect storm from the standpoint of the damage 
that it did and the direction that it took.
  I can speak about that perhaps a little bit more, Mr. Speaker; but I 
would add to that then, when local services disappeared and when we saw 
that many hundreds of the first responders were victims of the storm 
themselves, either their places were damaged by the wind, damaged by 
the water, under water, or damaged by the wind and the water and under 
water, but the first responders took a serious blow, and they were not 
there to help coordinate. They did not have a communications system to 
help coordinate with. I am sure that there are many, many stories of 
heroic people that toiled in oblivion in that chaos of the first few 
days that was the effect of the storm that hit New Orleans.
  I will say that that rolling chain reaction of disaster, the effect 
of the city's response in particular was not as effective as it may 
have been due to lack of communications ability, due to lack of 
resources in places where one would think they might have been, and 
then the loss of communications so that it was not possible to salvage 
the operations, salvage the response to the storm because the resources 
were not there, had there been the right decisions made, I think to 
provide them. So you take it up to the next level of the State, and 
there, again, communications and decision-making are certainly 
something that will be questioned.
  It kept the decisions out of the hands of the Federal Government, 
except for those National Guards like 711th Signal Battalion out of 
Mobile, Alabama, who came in and under whose order I do not know, but I 
am awfully glad they came. I was awfully proud to look at young 
Specialist Cunningham in the eye when he told me that they had 
chainsawed their way across Mississippi to get to Louisiana.
  That is the American way, Mr. Speaker, and when I hear the anecdote 
that was told by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) a few moments ago 
about the decision to place the vehicles on a couple of ships and keep 
them safe from the hurricane, and that offer was made by a couple of 
captains, he said that they made the decision in just a few minutes to 
place vehicles on a ship. They did that right away, and they protected 
all of those vehicles, they were in good condition, good shape, because 
a decision was made at the local level. Quick-thinking people that 
looked around and saw the resources that they had, that has always been 
the American way.
  When we let government make decisions, we delay. For government to 
make decisions, the bureaucracy moves too slowly, the information 
moving up to the bureaucracy gets there too slowly; and even if the 
right decision is made, chances are it does not get back down through 
and does not get implemented in time for it to have the effect that it 
might have.
  You really need people on the ground that are thinking for themselves 
and have enough self-confidence, enough leadership ability and enough 
authority to make those decisions like that decision was that 
recommended by the two ships' captains that saved all those vehicles, 
so that as soon as the storm was over, they could roll them off the 
ships and put them right to work rescuing people.
  I thought that was a good example, and to think that we maybe could 
have

[[Page H8637]]

had those kinds of decisions in other areas around the disaster area if 
we had gotten government more out of the way and let the local and 
those people make those decisions, but they had to make the right ones 
in preparation, too. That is the part that I think that the Committee 
on Government Reform will bring out here so that Americans will see it 
with a true perspective.
  If I could, I would appreciate the opportunity to yield to the 
gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) who knows her mind, comes 
here and speaks it, speaks up for the right causes and the right 
principles; and I am very pleased to be associated with the gentlewoman 
from North Carolina.
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I have enjoyed listening to my colleague from 
Iowa, and we share a lot of things in common, being able to know our 
own minds and speak them. I think they are in the face sometimes of 
running against the flow, but I think that is what the people of our 
respective States sent us here for, and so I think that that is what we 
should be doing.
  I have appreciated the comments that you have made. I heard a little 
bit from my classmate, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe), and his 
comments that he was making, too, and I think that all of us owe a 
great debt to the people from our districts who have stepped up and 
helped in so many ways.
  I know that the people of the 5th Congressional District of North 
Carolina, my district, have been extremely generous with their time and 
money in helping with the hurricane relief. They, and all the other 
people, have exemplified what a wonderful country we live in and how 
volunteers do step up when we need them to.
  Our government can do very, very many great things, and our 
government does do many great things. We have a lot of fabulous people 
who work for the Federal Government and the State and local 
governments, too; but there are things that we are not equipped to do.
  I, like you and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe), have been 
extremely saddened by the devastation that we have seen inflicted by 
these hurricanes. They are not the greatest disasters necessarily that 
have hit our country, but they have certainly been the greatest ones 
that have come in a long time.
  I think that what our military and the Federal agencies have done has 
been positive, but I think that we have to do more at the State level 
and the local level; and I think we have to urge people to do more 
through the volunteer organizations, as you talked about.
  I supported $10 billion in aid that we gave for this relief. I have 
supported every other bill that has come through except the one big 
omnibus bill that we had, the $52 billion bill.

                              {time}  1915

  We have done a lot to provide relief measures, tax relief measures 
for people, for college students, for workers and worker training 
programs. But my concern is that we spend the money that we spend here 
from the Federal level wisely. As a State Senator, I thought we should 
spend our government's money wisely, but we have to be extremely 
careful that we do not let our hearts override our heads. If I am 
spending my own money, it is okay if I let my heart dictate. But if I 
am spending other people's money, I think I have to make sure that I am 
voting with my head and not with my heart.
  One of the concerns that I have is that we have oversight in the 
money that is being spent on the hurricane relief. We have to have 
oversight and accountability or else we will waste the precious money 
that we have. Every dollar wasted is a dollar not going to help some 
family in need or some agency in need. And I think that it is shameful 
that members of the minority party have often exploited the suffering 
and loss of life in this tragedy to score political points. We do not 
need to be dealing with partisan issues here. We need to work together 
to help the people of the gulf coast. But we need to do it in the most 
effective and fiscally responsible way possible.
  I supported the select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the 
Preparation For and Response to Hurricane Katrina. I think that that is 
the way we should be operating. We are going to have a full 
investigation, as the gentleman mentioned, and the report is going to 
come out on February 15. All the facts have to come out so that we can 
take steps on the Federal, State and local level to make sure that we 
do not have a debacle like we had there before. I think it is very 
important we examine the role of the Federal Government in disaster 
relief.
  I am really proud to be a member of the Committee on Government 
Reform, and I appreciate my colleague from Iowa mentioning the 
Committee on Government Reform and the potential role it has to play in 
looking at this. What I hope is that the Committee on Government Reform 
is going to review many, many government programs and how they operate, 
and that this will be a catalyst for us to see what we are doing, 
particularly with rules and regulations as they apply to what is 
happening in the recovery.
  But as we do that, it seems to me we should expand the way we look at 
rules and regulations. Are they doing what we need them to do? Not only 
what went wrong with Hurricane Katrina, but what can we do to 
streamline the way we operate? I want measured, common sense solutions 
to what we have seen as a result of the hurricane, but I want common 
sense solutions to all of the problems that we face in this country, 
and I think our citizens are saying that.
  I know when I am at home, people are saying please do not just throw 
money at this problem. Let us use this as an opportunity to make things 
better in the future, not just put a Band-Aid on the issues, but make 
sure we do not lose the opportunity to find out what went wrong, fix 
that, and then go even further. And let us reduce the role of the 
Federal Government, because as my colleague said, in many cases just 
some good common sense on the part of average citizens can solve a lot 
of problems and keep us from wasting a lot of money in trying to solve 
a problem.
  So I commend the gentleman for having this special order tonight, for 
bringing this to our colleagues' attention. We need to keep talking 
about it. We need to keep talking about it in a positive way, not a 
negative way. We need to say let us look for solutions, let us solve 
the problems, and let us make the gulf coast a better place to live. 
Let us make our entire country a better place to live by reducing the 
role of the Federal Government in our lives.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from North 
Carolina (Ms. Foxx) for her contribution to this discussion and this 
debate and her involvement on the Committee on Government Reform, which 
has got an important role to play, and always has when it comes time to 
streamline government and bring more responsibility out of government.
  This is an especially important time. There are a lot of Federal 
dollars being poured into this region as we speak. And as the 
gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) said, she voted no on the 
$52 billion. I am one of those people that voted no on the $52 billion. 
Actually, $51.8 billion, to be precise, not that a couple hundred 
million dollars is not splitting hairs in this Congress, Mr. Speaker, 
but I think it is. And I voted no because there was approximately $5 
billion in there that was easily identifiable as not emergency 
spending, Mr. Speaker. It was money that was being directed towards 
300,000 trailer houses, of which 270,000 were back ordered. Back 
ordered trailer houses, and mitigation of future disasters is not 
emergency spending.
  I wanted to focus the money on emergency spending, and I wanted to 
get about another $10 billion down there to keep FEMA going for another 
week so that we could do a better job of oversight. Because, as you 
know, once the money goes out the door, it is a lot harder to watch 
where it is spent than it is to put the strings on it before it leaves 
the door.
  I believe we could have done a better job of that, but I do believe 
that we are joining together here to do a better job and looking back 
on some of that appropriations, to do the best we can to make sure it 
is spent as well as we can in any future requests. I want to make sure 
that we weigh in very carefully on where those dollars go.
  That is the biggest reason that I went down there fairly early in 
this, on September 11 and 12, and I got a good look at all of New 
Orleans from the air. I also flew down from the Corps of Engineers' 
headquarters there over the

[[Page H8638]]

Mississippi River, which runs approximately 90 miles south, in a little 
bit of a winding pattern down to the Gulf of Mexico where the 
Mississippi River outlets into the gulf. Most people in the upper 
Midwest think that New Orleans is on the coast, that it is the outlet 
of the Mississippi, but in fact it is another 90 miles or so. Of 
course, when I was there, it was only about 75, I believe, because the 
water was so high and the damage that was done it really shortened the 
Mississippi River by a significant proportion.
  Nonetheless, that disaster that I saw down along the channeling of 
the Mississippi River, or I will say next to the Mississippi River 
channel, where the river has perhaps, and I will state the information 
that I have is that the levees built to keep the Mississippi River in 
the channel are 25 feet above sea level. Then on the west side of the 
Mississippi, from the levee and going west, there is perhaps an average 
of about a half mile of bottom land there. That is protected with 
another levee about 25 feet high which protects the gulf, so that the 
gulf does not come into the backside of that levee that controls the 
Mississippi River.
  That area in between those two 25-foot levees is the area that is 
about a half mile wide and generally about 90 miles long, perhaps 45 
square miles, with six or seven towns in there. Those six or seven 
towns were all wiped out. The wind hit them all hard and damaged them 
severely. Even some of the best structures were really damaged 
severely.
  The wind hit, and then the water surged over the levee from the 
Mississippi River side and flooded that area in between those two 25-
foot dikes with that half a mile in between, and then the water surged 
over from the gulf side and did the same thing. So I am going to say 
wind damage like I have only seen in the worst of tornadoes, the entire 
area wind damaged like that, with entire buildings just blown away into 
splinters. Then, when the flood came from the surge, any buildings that 
were not blown away were mostly washed away. They floated and crashed 
up against each other against the levee.
  Mr. Speaker, I have here on the easel a picture of one of the better 
built buildings down there in that bottom land parallel to the 
Mississippi River. This may be, just guessing, perhaps 30 miles south 
of New Orleans along the Mississippi. This is a building that is built 
with steel pilings driven in, and who knows how deep, but down deep 
enough to get a very solid bearing in order to build a building that 
can withstand a hurricane and can withstand the kind of water surge 
that was going to come.
  As you can see, as good as it was built, it still blew everything 
from here on down away, and there is not a lot left to salvage here. 
One might be surprised that the structure seems to be fairly sound. I 
saw this all over, but I also square mile after square mile that had 
been homes that was nothing but a footing or a foundation or a concrete 
platform. I did not bring pictures of those because they are not so 
impressive, Mr. Speaker. That is just water-covered concrete footings 
and nothing left.
  There were trees were the wind blew so hard it simply blew the leaves 
off the tree and the trees died. The salt water that came in, of 
course, killed most everything green. That is another piece that we do 
not hear much about, Mr. Speaker.
  I have saved this particular picture because, in a way, it is kind of 
heartbreaking. I was walking along a levee south of Slidell, Louisiana, 
a levee that runs over towards New Orleans. And as I looked at the 
devastation after devastation, debris after debris, it was numbing 
after a while. It is hard to be shocked. In fact, you just get that 
sense of how can anything be worse and you start counting things in the 
trees, like counting life jackets that are hanging from the trees, 
hundreds of them; and counting refrigerators up in the trees, and I 
will say dozens of them. Odd things that stick out in a person's mind.
  I ended up with about 1,800 pictures, which when I go back and look 
at them, I see things in those pictures that I did not see when I was 
there in person. But this caught my eye. Laying on the ground beside a 
place that used to be a home, and it says Happy Anniversary. This has 
not been disturbed at all. It is exactly the way it laid. You can see 
where the grass is laid over the top of the handle. Whether it was a 
husband that bought that for the wife, or the wife for the husband, or 
the children for the parents, or whether it was the grandchildren for 
the grandparents, I do not know, but when I look at that, I see one of 
the doves that was on top is broken and laying here and it seems to 
reflect on what happened to some of the families that lost a loved one 
maybe have not found a loved one yet.
  We have done a pretty good job of locating people, but the effort 
still goes on. And when the waters came up, and they came so fast that 
there might be a 17- to 20-foot surge that would go from zero to 17 to 
20 feet in a matter of 3 minutes, maybe 4 minutes, that was not much 
time to get away. A lot of people had to go up the stairs of their 
house up to their attics. And when the water came and filled their 
attic, they needed something to chop their way out through the roof in 
order to climb out on the roof to save themselves from the flood.
  I do not know how many people did not have a means to chop themselves 
out of their own attic. I do not know, but as I look at this, I cannot 
help but think that it may not be this family that lost someone, but I 
believe it represents many of the families that did lose someone who 
was celebrating their anniversary not all that long ago.
  On the positive side, Mr. Speaker, this is a very resilient Nation, 
and we have a strong character and a strong resilience. We also have a 
sense of defiance, which is rooted back in the defiance of King George. 
So when we are met with disaster, no matter how bad the disaster, no 
matter how bad the blow, we have people that stand up and they look 
around and they think, all right, if that is the best you can give me, 
then I can take that and I am going to rebuild. I will put my life back 
together, my business back together, put my house back together, and I 
am going to live here and make it. I am going to be profitable and 
contribute back to this country and the neighborhood and the economy.
  This is a symbol of that defiance, Mr. Speaker. This is one of the 
things that warmed my heart as we flew by there. The individual or the 
family that owned this place had lost almost everything. This is mostly 
trash and rubble. If you look up here, this is debris that has all been 
pushed over by the wind. That is just floating debris, and the water 
has been over the top of this levee. That is the Mississippi River 
right at the top of the picture.
  As the owner came and found nothing, he did find a flag pole that was 
still standing. There is no way the flag that was on that flag pole 
originally survived that wind. But, Mr. Speaker, the first thing he did 
was went and got a fresh Old Glory and ran it up to the top of that 
flag pole in defiance of the storm and in proud independence that he 
would be, and I assume it is a he, rebuilding.
  One day I will go back down there, and I hope I can identify that 
flag pole, because I think there is going to be some buildings that 
have been reconstructed again, and the place will one day look better 
than it did the day before the storm hit.

                              {time}  1930

  We have a lot of big decisions to make: where the Federal dollars 
will go, where they will come from. We have an obligation to look for 
offsets. We cannot continue to put debt on the backs of our children 
and grandchildren. We can find the savings.
  I am convinced that this Congress, working together in a bipartisan 
manner, will be able to find ways to save money so we can get the 
resources into the gulf coast to help out our friends in Texas, 
Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, and to a lesser extent some of 
Florida. I am hopeful that we can join together in a way to do that.
  I have a few ideas myself. I am not going to enter into this debate 
here tonight with them, but I have been working on my own list on how 
to fund Hurricane Katrina's reconstruction. It is essential that we 
find offsets, and we can do some reconciliation legislation. It will be 
a blessing for us because we will find a way to make government more 
efficient. We will have that debate here. It will be on the floor of 
Congress.
  But also finding ways to pay for it is not enough. We also have to 
spend the

[[Page H8639]]

money wisely. We need to limit it to the extent we can while still 
taking care of our obligations from the Federal Government.
  I have looked at the things that we need to do to protect New Orleans 
again. It is below sea level. There was 16 feet of water standing in 
parts of New Orleans. That whole area with standing water is below sea 
level. We have to find a way, and there was discussion whether we could 
construct below sea level. Those questions landed on my ears. Actually, 
I thought they were prudent questions that needed to be asked, 
deliberated upon, and we need to bring more facts to the table before 
we can come up with a definitive answer.
  But when you look at New Orleans and see the downtown buildings that 
rise up out of the water, and I was able to see it on a day when it was 
a bright blue sky, and the sunlight reflecting off the downtown 
buildings made the water blue, as the downtown buildings stood up, I 
looked and it was clear to me, yes, you cannot let a great city like 
New Orleans stand in water and not be reconstructed better than it was 
before. We need to rebuild the city, but we need to rebuild the city in 
a wise fashion.
  My first recommendation is New Orleans, the levees that protect it 
and the systems that protect it from a hurricane, be constructed in 
preparation for a category 5 hurricane. If you can imagine a worse one, 
let us reconstruct for that. Let us do the hurricane mitigation work so 
the worst storm we can imagine cannot come in and do the kind of damage 
that Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans.
  The first step is as the water in Lake Pontchartrain increased by 
that 14 to 15-foot average water depth, and as it went up another 8 to 
10 feet, because of the storm surge from the gulf, as the low pressure 
center raised the level of the water in the ocean and that hard south 
wind at 150 miles an hour drove that water up into the lake, stacked it 
up against the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain and filled that lake 
up with 8 to 10 feet more water, and then when the hurricane shifted to 
the east and winds came from the north, it drove that high wall of 
water down against the levees on the south side of Lake Pontchartrain. 
The waves added another 8 to 10 feet, it washed over the levees and 
flooded the city.
  We know what happened, and to prevent it from happening again, I 
believe we need to do the engineering study, do the financial analysis, 
but repair the levees on the outlet of Lake Pontchartrain to a level 
that can protect Lake Pontchartrain itself from a category 5 hurricane 
so it cannot be breached, and to put hurricane gates in where necessary 
so we can close those in the event of a storm and keep the ocean water 
out of Lake Pontchartrain. That is step one.
  Step two is if it gets in there or if there is a surge of the water 
in there, and I do not know if it is possible to have that kind of an 
effort under any kind of a storm, but if the water does get into Lake 
Pontchartrain, then we need to be prepared for the second level of 
protection.
  That second level would be to build the levees between Lake 
Pontchartrain and New Orleans to an elevation that will protect New 
Orleans from 25 feet above sea level from a category 5, and then to put 
hurricane gates in at the inlets of the canals, the 17th Street Canal 
being the most infamous of them all. That can be done and protected. We 
need to come out with a cost and engineering analysis of that and make 
a decision in this Congress.
  I believe if that cost is anywhere near reasonable, we need to get 
that done before there is new construction going on down below sea 
level in New Orleans itself. So that is two systems that would protect 
New Orleans from a flood.
  I point out there is a significant amount of construction done in the 
world below sea level. Holland is one of those examples. I am told a 
third of Holland is below sea level; and when I was told that, I said 
they have reclaimed another portion from the sea since when I went to 
school and a fourth of the nation was underwater. That is probably the 
case. They continually reclaim. They construct below sea level. I 
believe we can do that in the area of New Orleans. I have some more 
questions from the engineering perspective that I do not have the 
answers to, but protect the outlet of Lake Pontchartrain to keep the 
ocean water out and storm surge out, and keep the water in Lake 
Pontchartrain there by putting gates at the inlet of the canals, and 
perhaps raise the level of the hurricane levees on Lake Pontchartrain.

  The third thing is the pump stations have to be raised up well above 
the high water mark of this flood, and they need to have redundancies 
built in so they can pump water if the power goes out. If the power 
goes out, they automatically kick on. And the water that is being 
pumped out of New Orleans now over the last week and a half or so, it 
is a massive quantity of water. It is 27,000 cubic feet per second, 
more than twice the amount of water that runs down the Missouri River 
at Sioux City, Iowa, in the area where I live.
  Mr. Speaker, Florida has a lot of experience with reconstructing in 
preparation for category 5 hurricanes. They have perfected a lot of the 
method of how to prepare for a hurricane, how to evacuate, how to zone 
the houses and the buildings so they are prepared for that kind of wind 
and damage. Requiring shutters is one thing, and building off the 
ground is another. There are a number of ideas from an architectural 
standpoint. There is much that has already been established. We should 
look at that opportunity to take the language of those zoning 
restrictions that they have and the emergency response system that they 
developed in Florida and bring that into Louisiana, Mississippi and 
parts of Texas; but Louisiana needing the most help, it appears.
  I think we can learn from our experience. We need to also be able to 
have a Federal requirement on the construction of the levee so if there 
is a levee that can be breached and put that much property in jeopardy, 
we need to have Federal oversight over that levee. There is much that 
can be done and should be done.
  I will be involved in the effort to identify the mitigation work and 
looking at the cost and the engineering design and the recommendations. 
I would also point out that there will be a population loss in New 
Orleans. I do not know that number, no one knows that number, but 
perhaps a loss of a quarter of the population, perhaps more. If that is 
the case, the homes that will be condemned, many are still under water 
today, that will be the last place that needs to be reconstructed.
  The reconstruction of the homes can go in the higher elevation areas 
where they do not have water. Those decisions need to be made so people 
can make plans for the future. That is part of this Congress' 
responsibility. Wherever there are Federal dollars, we have an 
obligation to the taxpayers that they are spent wisely.
  There are private sector solutions to this, and we need to listen to 
our representatives from that area, those that are advocating for less 
pressure on taxpayers and more pressure on individuals, and the 
solutions of tax credits and I will say commerce-friendly zones, tax 
free zones, for example, lay all of those ideas out on the table.
  The gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Boustany) and the gentleman from 
Louisiana (Mr. Jindal) both have been very active, along with the other 
Representatives from Louisiana. The gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. 
McCrery) has been very vocal here. I am looking forward to their input 
and working in cooperation with them so we put a solution together that 
will leave a legacy of making it better when things are bad in the 
event of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

                          ____________________