[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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