[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 166 (Tuesday, December 20, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14196-S14198]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
HURRICANE KATRINA RELIEF
Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, we do have some important work to finish
tomorrow. That is why I thought I would spend a few minutes tonight
reminding my colleagues of a very significant part of that work.
Before I came to work this morning, I spent a little time with our
two children, our 8-year-old precious little angel girl, Mary Shannon,
and our 12-year-old little boy. We spent some time at breakfast, and
then we started doing what a lot of families do around this holiday,
and that is listen to some Christmas music and some holiday music and
wrap a few gifts that they had actually, amazingly picked out
themselves for their Kris Kringles. We talked about how important it
was going to be to see family over the holidays. As they struggled to
wrap the gifts, with their tape and their scissors, we tried to spend a
little family time together before I came to work today.
It reminded me of how simple but wonderfully special those moments
are with families at this time of year, as moms and dads make their
regular cookies and traditional dinners and recipes and wrap packages
the same way and decorate the trees the same way and put out the
nativity scenes. And all over the country that is happening.
There is one place that that is not happening the way it usually does
and that is along the gulf coast of this country, and particularly in
Louisiana.
About 3 months ago, two fierce storms hit our coast. We basically
survived through the night, only to wake up the next morning and find
the levees had broken, and 200,000-plus homes and 18,000 businesses
were destroyed literally in a matter of a few hours.
The devastation was so great and so expansive and so unprecedented
that it has literally taken the Nation and this Congress and even
officials in the region, major business operations in the region, 3
months or more to actually realize the extent of the devastation.
I have spent a lot of time on the Senate floor with my colleague,
Senator Vitter, showing pictures and graphs to try to explain what
actually happened. This one isn't fancy. It is simple, but it is pretty
clear. When we come down here to try to explain how much help the
people of Louisiana need, the people of Mississippi, and to some extent
a little bit in Alabama and Texas because of two killer storms, Katrina
and Rita, and the multiple levee breaks that ensued, one figure that
helped my staff and our people to understand is this chart that shows
Hurricane Andrew as the most expensive storm ever to hit the coast of
the United States in 1992. They are still recovering from it in
Florida.
In that massive storm, 28,000 homes were destroyed--28,000, in
Homestead, FL, and in places around. People are still living in
trailers after 10-plus, 14 years.
But I have to show my colleagues right here, in Katrina, 3 months
ago, a storm and levee break came through and around 275,000 homes, 10
times the amount of Hurricane Andrew, 10 times the amount of
destruction.
I was sitting in my home just a few blocks from here with my children
this morning, with three rolls of wrapping paper and a couple of pairs
of scissors. And, thank goodness, we could find the Scotch tape which
is always a challenge when you are wrapping gifts. I had to close my
eyes and think about my mother's house that is not occupied now after
45 years of raising 9 children and 37 grandchildren. It had 7 feet of
water in it.
And my sisters and our friends and people from all walks of life,
rich and poor, Black and White, senior citizens and moms and dads who
are looking forward to having their children and grandchildren with
them, there are no homes to wrap these gifts or to put the tree or to
hang the lights.
I just came tonight to tell my colleagues that while this bill looks
like just sort of a regular package of lots of words and lines and fine
print, what is in one of these bills tomorrow is a package of hope for
the 275,000 families who lived in those homes that were completely
destroyed--not a roof damaged, not a porch falling over, not a few
steps missing but homes completely destroyed.
I want to show you what a home completely destroyed looks like;
275,000 homes along the gulf coast look something like this. Some of
them look worse.
This picture was in the National Geographic a couple of weeks ago.
This is what the homes along the gulf coast look like.
That is why I am not going home this Christmas while we will be
working as many hours and days as it takes until people like this have
some hope that they can get back to their home. It is not just
Christmas, which would be impossible in this situation, but at least by
next Christmas.
I am going to say again, for the one-hundredth time, FEMA is not
sufficient to get us back to our homes, to build our churches again, to
rebuild our schools and to rebuild our communities. It is an
insufficient mechanism, and on its best day it could not accomplish
this goal.
In this package tomorrow in the Defense appropriations bill, because
of political concerns of the Congress, we find our $29 billion hope
package in there that finally moves money from an agency that can't
manage to spend it well into the hands of competent local officials and
local entities and private businesses and faith-based organizations and
individual Americans who show a lot of grit and a lot of heart to build
their State and their community again.
We are not going home without the hope package. It is not fair and
America can do better.
This is what the inside of many homes in New Orleans looks like
because the water was so high in many of our neighborhoods, even
neighborhoods
[[Page S14197]]
that had never flooded, neighborhoods that had never had a drop of
water before. After several weeks and finally the water went down, this
is what families saw all throughout south Louisiana and in New Orleans,
St. Bernard Parish, parts of Jefferson Parish, in neighborhoods in some
places where the average home is valued at $50,000 to $75,000. But
there are also some neighborhoods where the average home is worth $1
million.
In all homes, large and small, rich and poor, this is what families
are doing this holiday season. They come up here to Senator Vitter's
office and to my office. ``Senator, does anybody know we are down here?
Does anybody know we have lost our churches, our schools, our
community? Does anybody care? What is Congress doing?''
Because of the good work of many Members of this body, particularly I
have to say Senator Thad Cochran from Mississippi, who basically
refused to accept an anemic and incomplete proposal from the
administration that basically sent money to fix a few Federal
buildings--I don't see a Federal building anywhere in this picture. I
see a family's home. I see everything that they owned destroyed,
impossible to reclaim. While you can buy a few sofas--let me assure you
that there are many you can choose from--I promise you that the wedding
album which was lost is irreplaceable. The pictures of the children are
irreplaceable. The special mementos handed down from grandmother to
mother to daughter are gone, are priceless and can't be replaced. And
no insurance company can provide you sufficient funding for those
things that have been lost.
This is what 250,000 homes in Louisiana look like. It is bad enough
to lose your home. But I also want to try to impress upon the Members
of Congress that losing your home is pretty bad because it is where
most people have equity. Most of the net worth of Americans is in their
homes. We pride ourselves on being homeowners and a nation of
homeowners and middle-class families.
But let me show you what this hurricane and flood did. It destroyed
18,752 businesses, catastrophically destroyed, gone in Louisiana,
compared to 1,912 in Mississippi, 295 in Texas, and 20 in Alabama;
18,700 businesses gone, no more; restaurants, cleaners, manufacturers,
law firms, doctors' offices, clinics, just gone.
People who are cleaning out their houses are also cleaning out their
businesses, and insurance checks are slow to come, and this hope
package is stuck right here in Congress.
Last week we had some, I guess, good news about the economic front in
America. I think you can read statistics many different ways. But for
the Record tonight--this came out yesterday--I saw one or two submitted
for the Record. The Bureau of Economic Analysis in the U.S. Department
of Commerce, which issued the growth rate of State personal income,
says the hurricane slowed personal income growth.
You can see in a different case, but there is an absolutely dead,
stop, halt, reverse taking place in Louisiana. There is a 25 percent
reduction in personal income growth in Louisiana. There is no State in
the Nation even close.
Mississippi was hard hit, and I do not underestimate the destruction
along that gulf coast which we love, as I have said as many times as I
can, almost as much as we love Louisiana because many people in
Louisiana grew up on the gulf coast and spent many happy days on those
beaches. Mississippi has grown .8 percent. The national average was
something closer to 1.8 percent. Look at the dramatic fall in
Louisiana. There is nothing close: 25 percent reduction.
What we are trying to say is it was not just a regular hurricane. It
was not just the second hurricane. It was a multiple break of Federal
levees that this Congress had the responsibility to build, to design,
and to maintain, which we utterly failed to do, and we lost 250,000
homes.
What do we tell those people? You are on your own? Go gather up your
church members and see if you can raise a roof? The churches are not
there, either. Go to your school and gather up your community and let's
just be self-reliant and raise ourselves up by our bootstraps. The
school is gone. There is no cafeteria. There is no multipurpose room.
There is no auditorium.
Least week, I went home and attended a church service briefly. It was
amazing to walk into a church where the roof was still sort of caved in
halfway--not dangerous but hanging; you could see the top of the roof,
the inside of the roof was damaged--with 1,500 people in this church.
You look out the front door of the church, and there are no homes
anywhere around that are inhabitable. You wonder, Where did the people
come from? People drove, from what Father Vien told me, 2 and 3 hours
to come to Mass. People are driving half a day to go back to their
church to say Mass and to be in church with their community--that is
how meaningful it is--with the hope that maybe someday they can get
back to their neighborhood.
I am not saying that Members of this Congress individually have not
tried. There have been heroic efforts made, I believe, with what
Senator Enzi has done in our education package; Senator Kennedy.
Senator Cochran and Senator Lott have worked tirelessly. Senator Vitter
has been in this Senate and in many meetings and has taken Senators to
Louisiana.
We cannot go home without help. We cannot go home without help. If
this package is not passed tomorrow--and I didn't package it in the
bill it is packaged in, which is Defense--we cannot go home without our
$29 billion hope package, moving money from FEMA, finally, thank
goodness; not adding money to the deficit but moving that money to
community development block grants to use in an expanded way; $3
billion to protect our levee system, to give people hope and security
that as we begin the plan for rebuilding, they will not be flooded
again; help for our universities; help for our medical schools; help
for the infrastructure, the major highways that have been destroyed. We
cannot go home without that hope package.
I hope my colleagues know what is at stake. I know everyone is
anxious to get home to their families and to their children. I am
looking forward to spending some off time with my family. We cannot
leave without passing that package of hope for the people on the gulf
coast. I am prepared to work through Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and
into Christmas on Sunday if we have to until we can get this package
done. If I thought we could wait until January, we could take a break
and come back--we cannot. People are holding on by a thread.
Banks are threatening to foreclose on people's houses. Having given
them forbearance for 3 months, they are now sending people notices that
they will have to pay their mortgage in January. But not just the
January mortgage; they have to pay four mortgages in the month of
January. So the people who have lost 1 of the 18,000 businesses, the
people whose homes look like this, they are being asked to pay 4 months
of a mortgage on this home. This family is having trouble getting a
trailer to live in. Meanwhile, they have to pay mortgages on this home.
If not, they will be foreclosed. All the equity they built up, which
could be considerable--several hundred thousand in some cases,
sometimes more, maybe even over $1 billion of equity--lost, not because
there isn't a solution to their dilemma but because this Congress and
this administration haven't figured out, haven't worked hard enough to
give them a helping hand.
These people aren't looking for charity. They give to charity. Most
of the people in Louisiana who have lost their homes have never asked
for a penny from anybody. All they have been doing is digging in their
pocket for the last 50 years as a family. They make a little bit of
money and give to people in more need. Now the middle-class families
who never asked for a thing need help from us, and we can't figure out
how to get their hope package through?
I express that I am prepared to stay through Christmas day, if need
be, and beyond, to get this package through. I will read into the
record a beautifully written paragraph from a new book that is out
which is written by Tom Piazza, ``Why New Orleans Matters.''
I am the Senator for the whole State, and I love all 64 parishes. It
is quite a special place and one we will fight hard to restore. The
southern part of our
[[Page S14198]]
State has been very hard hit. Thank goodness our capital city of Baton
Rouge is standing up very strongly. They have grown from a city of
350,000 to a city of 500,000 over the weekend, 3 months ago. The mayor
of that city, ``Kip'' Holden, has now had to take on an additional
150,000 citizens and is managing very well under the circumstances.
Lafayette is in the southwest and is part of Cajun Country. They have
probably increased 50,000 or 60,000. New Orleans is my hometown, and it
is something we will fight hard to restore. It is representative of the
spirit of all of Louisiana.
I will read into the record in closing why this fight is worth having
and why we are not going to give up until we get the help, the money,
the tools, and the support.
He writes:
New Orleans is not just a list of attractions or
restaurants or ceremonies, no matter how sublime and subtle.
New Orleans is the interaction among all these things and
countless more. It gains its character from the spirit that
is summoned, like a hologram, in the midst all these
elements, and that comes, ultimately, from the people who
live there, and from those whose parents and grandparents and
ancestors lived there. That spirit, as much as, or more than,
the city's physical and economic infrastructure, is what is
in jeopardy right now. In the wake of the worst natural
disaster in this country's history, one from which New
Orleans, and the rest of the country, will be digging out for
years, it may be good to remember what has been lost, and to
think hard about what is worth fighting to save.
I plan to fight with all of my strength and energy and commitment to
save this wonderful city, to save south Louisiana, which has given so
much, and to fight hard for people who only ever expected their
Government to meet them halfway, for this Federal Government to be what
it was created to be, which is a help to people in time of need. We are
going to be here through Christmas if we have to.
I thank all of my colleagues for their patience and forbearance. Many
of them have stepped up beyond the call of duty to help a State they do
not even represent. But, of course, as Senators, they know the need of
people in times like these.
I look forward to the debate tomorrow.
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