[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 55 (Thursday, March 29, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4150-S4153]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          CATASTROPHIC DISASTER RECOVERY FAIRNESS ACT OF 2007

  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I intend, in a few minutes, to call up a 
bill for passage, and I think I will be joined on the floor by Senator 
Reid at the appropriate time. The bill I am going to speak about in a 
minute is the Catastrophic Disaster Recovery Fairness Act of 2007, 
which I am proud to cosponsor with Senator Lott and others. We have 
been working on trying to get this bill cleared, and I will come back 
to that in a moment, but before I call this bill up for final passage, 
I would like to speak for a moment about the emergency supplemental 
bill that we passed.
  The Congress must--and usually does--and is required to take care of 
emergency issues. These are situations that, by the nature of 
emergencies, we cannot plan for. The war we are prosecuting and trying 
to win has extended well beyond the boundaries that many of us believed 
initially, so there are new costs associated with that war. There have 
been emergencies right here in the country that have taken place that 
could never have been predicted or anticipated.
  We are still recovering, as you know, from two of those very terrible 
storms, two of the worst to ever hit the United States of America, 
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The aftermath of those storms was the 
multiple failure of a levee system that has protected this great 
community for over 300 years. It is not just any city or any region, it 
is a very special historic city and region, the city of New Orleans. It 
is also of great economic significance for the Nation.
  We could not necessarily predict this in our regular budgets, and so 
it is appropriate that we provide emergency funding for emergencies, 
and that is what the supplemental is. It isn't a war spending bill, it 
is an emergency bill. There are things associated with the ongoing war 
in Iraq and Afghanistan that are emergencies, but there are things 
happening in the United States also that are emergencies.
  For Senators to come to this floor and argue over the last 2 weeks 
that there are no emergencies in the United States that we need to take 
care of and that all we need to do is to focus on the war in Iraq, I 
would ask them to go home and talk to their constituents because that 
is not what my constituents are saying, Republicans and Democrats. I 
don't think that is what anyone is saying, any constituent in anybody's 
State. I think they are saying, whatever their feelings are about the 
war and how we should prosecute it, there are most certainly 
emergencies right here in the United States that need to be dealt with.
  I am proud that many of us on the Democratic side, as well as some of 
our Republican friends, decided to put some money in this emergency 
supplemental bill to take care of real American emergencies right here 
on the home soil--right here in America. One of those emergencies is 
the ongoing attempts to rebuild the gulf coast, primarily in Louisiana 
and Mississippi, but we also have friends in the southern part of Texas 
who are still hurting and also in the southern part of Alabama and 
through some parts of Florida. So I like to always say we are fighting 
hard for the gulf coast and trying to rebuild the gulf coast.
  This Congress has been generous, has been innovative, and has been 
trying to think outside of the box to respond to an unprecedented 
disaster. Again, the scope of this disaster is beyond anything we have 
attempted. You know the long and sorry record: When we went to call on 
FEMA, it showed up but it was weak, anemic, underled, and 
underresourced. When we called on the Red Cross, as respectable as that 
organization and that name is, and they have done remarkable work, they 
too were overwhelmed. This is a job that was beyond the ability of the 
tools that we normally have to rebuild, and so we have been scrambling 
as a Congress to redesign tools. Some we have done a good job on and 
some we haven't.
  There is a lot of redtape we unwittingly created, and not with any 
ill intent, but that has been the consequences of many of the things we 
have passed. And so people are caught up in a lot of bureaucracy and a 
lot of redtape. There has been a lot of money thrown at them, which is 
very frustrating because they hear about it, they think they are going 
to get it, but they can't feel it because the bureaucracy has it 
basically tied up.
  So part of what we have done in this supplemental, which is very 
good, is we have removed some of the redtape and added some additional 
funding where we thought we were short, so that the hundreds of 
thousands of people on the gulf coast who have lost their homes, who 
have lost their businesses, who have seen everything they have worked 
for, some for 50 years or 60 years, literally washed away by 
floodwaters or collapsed levees, they could have a chance to rebuild.
  I feel very strongly about this. I have been very generous as an 
appropriator with help to foreign countries. I have helped send money 
to Afghanistan, to countries in Africa, and to South America. I was one 
of the first Senators on the ground when Hurricane

[[Page S4151]]

Mitch hit Honduras. I believe in helping people when they are in their 
hour of need. But I can tell you people on the gulf coast are starting 
to ask: Does anybody remember that we are here in the United States and 
we need help as well?
  So that is what this supplemental bill did. Let me say a couple of 
things we tried to do in it.
  We passed in this supplemental emergency spending bill for the United 
States of America a waiver of a 10-percent match. In every disaster, we 
require the locals to put up money. It makes sense, and normally it 
works, and that is appropriate. But in a case where the disaster is so 
catastrophic, let's say in St. Bernard Parish, which is the parish I 
represent, there were 67,000 people who lived there before the storm. 
It was a middle-class, working-class community. Every single home was 
destroyed. Every fire station was destroyed. Every police station was 
destroyed.
  The sheriff had to swim out of the second floor with his deputies. He 
is a big, strong sheriff, thank goodness, and a good swimmer. If he 
wasn't, he would have drowned--Jack Stevens, my good friend. He swam 
out, literally saving his deputies. His headquarters was destroyed.
  Now, I ask you: How is St. Bernard Parish going to come up with a 10-
percent match? It sounds reasonable, but in this case it is not.
  No. 2, these 10-percent waivers, or matches, have been waived before. 
In 32 of the last 38 disasters, they have been waived. I asked the 
administration and others to waive this one. They said ``no.'' So we 
have done it now, as a matter of fact, in this bill. Congress said yes, 
it is right that this be waived. It will not only provide several 
hundred million dollars more in emergency disaster money for Louisiana 
and Mississippi, but, most importantly, it will completely eliminate 
the 10-percent match requirement which is required on each individual 
project worksheet.

  Now, somebody may ask how many project worksheets we have, which 
means how many individual public entities have requested rebuilding, 
whether it is a library or half a library; a wing of a school or a 
whole school; a light post or a sewer system. We have 23,000 of those 
project worksheets pending for Louisiana alone. Because of this 10-
percent requirement, there is a NEPA review, a FEMA review, a HUD 
review--we are being reviewed to death. We can't do this in this 
fashion. We have to waive this 10 percent.
  Not only will $750 million be immediately available, but more than 
the money, the redtape goes away. Ninety percent of the redtape goes 
away, and we can actually do what we say we are going to do, which is 
rebuilding the gulf coast, one fire station, one police station, one 
library at a time. This is not theory, this is practical. If you want 
to rebuild a city, you have to rebuild the fire stations, you have to 
rebuild the police stations, you have to actually rebuild homes, pave 
streets, et cetera, et cetera. All of this is at a slow crawl because 
of this 10 percent.
  So I am proud of my colleagues who voted for this supplemental, 
because we waived this big piece of redtape, and I wish to thank them. 
I hope the President does not veto this bill because of that. I hope to 
be negotiating with the President and the administration in good faith 
to perhaps explain some things he is not quite understanding about the 
difficulty we are facing in the gulf coast and see if he can work with 
us to keep this waiver in place.
  In addition, we put in the supplemental $1.3 billion for levees. One 
of the most memorable speeches the President made was in Jackson 
Square, and I was pleased he came down right after the storms and spoke 
in Jackson Square when there weren't many lights on in the whole 
region. We put up lights that night for that speech. Generators were 
brought in to turn the lights on so the President could be seen when he 
made the speech. The rest of the French Quarter was completely dark. If 
you were in the city that night he made that speech, you wouldn't have 
been able to see your hand in front of your face, but the world saw the 
President because we got generators to turn those lights on so he could 
be seen. When he stood there in the dark, he said he would do whatever 
his administration needed to do to rebuild the levees in this 
metropolitan area.
  I am not talking about little rinky-dink levees, I am talking about 
federally authorized levees that collapsed because they were not funded 
correctly, they were not maintained correctly, and the Corps of 
Engineers has admitted it was their fault and they need to fix it. 
Where I come from, if you break something, you fix it. The Corps of 
Engineers' levees collapsed, and they need to fix them.
  So here comes the supplemental request, and lo and behold there is no 
new money for levees. We get a request from the administration that it 
wanted to move $1.3 billion from one set of projects to another, 
claiming this set of projects isn't ready to go, and they want to move 
it from the east bank to the west bank. Senator Vitter and I discussed 
this, and we said ``no.'' The days of moving money from the east bank 
to the west bank, in hopes that next year we would come back and find 
some new money for the east bank, are over with. We did that for the 
last 40 years, and then 18 months ago New Orleans and the surrounding 
area went underwater.
  No more moving the money. No more shell games. This supplemental says 
``no,'' and we put in an additional $1.3 billion. We are not moving 
levee monies from one of our constituent groups to another constituent 
group in hopes we will come back next year and fill in the pot. It is 
akin to musical chairs. You keep moving chairs, and when the music 
stops, somebody is going to be without a chair. I am not doing that 
anymore.
  Every person in south Louisiana and in Mississippi who deserves a 
federally protected levee is going to get it. Those levees are going to 
hold, and we are not moving this money around anymore. So that money is 
in the supplemental, and I thank Senator Byrd and Senator Murray and 
Senator Dorgan particularly for their strong support of that principle.
  Two more things, and then I will call up this bill for discussion.
  We also got some funding--and I thank Senator Kennedy particularly 
for his help in this--for recruiting teachers. I can't tell you how 
difficult it has been for our teachers, our parents, and our students. 
We did have a happy success story, though, regarding education. Since I 
have talked about things that didn't work, let me spend a minute 
talking about something that did work.
  On Monday morning, when the city of New Orleans was 80 percent 
underwater, and we looked up and millions of people had fled their 
homes along the gulf coast, we realized there were about 330,000 
children who had no school to go to on Monday morning. I want that to 
sink in for a minute. There were 330,000 children, from kindergarten to 
12th grade, who had no school to go to on Monday morning. That was a 
problem, and we had no solution for it.
  There was no tool in the toolbox. FEMA didn't have a plan. There was 
nothing we could do. So we thought for a minute, and between the work 
of this Congress, the administration, and the good people down in 
Louisiana and Mississippi, we came up with a plan that basically said 
this: If every parent will show up at a school and get your child 
registered, the Federal Government will send that school a check. Don't 
worry about it. You don't have to pay for it, we will take care of it.
  It was a most extraordinary effort because, you know what, it worked. 
For the most part, after this major disaster, almost all of those 
330,000 children actually attended school somewhere last year and the 
schools were actually reimbursed. So when people tell me Congress can't 
do anything well, I like to point this out, to say: Yes, sometimes we 
actually manage to do something really well. And that worked.
  What we failed to realize, though, is it was not just the tuition for 
the children we had to send--whether they left parochial school and 
went to public or public school and went to parochial, we covered it, 
no questions asked. But what we didn't think about is what happens to 
the thousands of teachers whose schools were ruined, whose homes were 
flooded, whose churches were destroyed, and they had to move--but they 
want to come back now and teach--how do we get them to come back and 
live in a community that is so destroyed? What incentives can we give 
them to come back?

[[Page S4152]]

  Many of these teachers are very dedicated, and many of them have come 
back under harsh conditions. But we think it might be wise, when you 
are trying to rebuild from a nuclear bomb explosion--and we hope that 
never happens--or a dirty bomb or Tsunami or major terrorist attack or 
perhaps just a terrible storm or tornado or hurricane, if you have to 
rebuild a devastated area, you need to encourage some key people to 
come back: doctors, nurses, teachers. We have some money in this bill 
to give the appropriate incentives for teachers to come back.
  We are not just going to build the old school system we had which was 
failing students and disappointing parents and not really a very 
successful story. We are in the process, with the help of Republicans 
and Democrats here, of building a new kind of public school system.
  So this money in this supplemental will help us to recruit quality 
teachers, to acknowledge what we are asking of them. Teaching under 
normal circumstances is difficult. To teach children in a classroom 
that is a temporary and sometimes wholly inadequate structure, where 
these children are living in trailers at night, where the teachers 
themselves have to live in 16-by-8 trailers--the least we could do is 
give them some financial incentive to just make it through the next 
year or two until we can stabilize the situation and rebuild the 
infrastructure of this city. I am excited about that.
  I am not going to go into any more detail about the historic 
preservation funding. Obviously, people in America know that New 
Orleans and south Louisiana have some of the most historic structures 
in the Nation and that they are at risk. This additional funding helps 
us preserve that.
  We also have some funding in here for our fisheries. Our fishermen 
are small businesspeople, many of them. They don't work on the land; 
they work on the water. They don't work in an office; they work on 
their boats. Their boats were destroyed. We don't think of them as 
businesspeople, but they are. Our disaster assistance has to take care 
of our farmers, our ranchers, our urban and rural--and our fisheries. 
We have determined we had not done enough for them and for their needs, 
so we have some money to help them.
  People say: Where do we get this funding? It comes off budget. This 
country is a great country. It is one of the great benefits of 
belonging to a great and powerful nation--if your region gets 
devastated, the rest of the country's money will be pooled to help you. 
If something happens--and it did in New York--we all pool our resources 
to help out. Now New York is doing magnificently. There was a question, 
after 9/11, as to what would happen, but because we all helped and they 
did a great job, that area is being rebuilt. Even though we still mourn 
the loss of those 3,000 Americans who lost their lives and it is still 
a very sad thing for us to think about, we are proud of helping to 
rebuild that great city.
  If something were to happen, Mr. President, in your State--and your 
State is a coastal State as well; you have had your share of 
disasters--even though your State is tiny and you might not be able to 
bail yourself out, you are part of a great nation that will step up and 
help you as well.
  I would like to speak for a minute about the Catastrophic Disaster 
Recovery Fairness Act. I will ask, at the appropriate time, for this 
bill to be called up and to clear it by unanimous consent. This 
particular bill was not included in the supplemental. It has not been 
included in any other major legislation. This bill will eliminate a 
great barrier to construction of homes in the gulf coast.
  People ask me all the time: Senator, how is it possible that we have 
sent over $100 billion and yet we cannot seem to get massive rebuilding 
underway? This is one of the answers, and I hope I can explain this 
simply and clearly because it will help people understand.
  The Small Business Administration, in a disaster, will lend money to 
people if they qualify for a small business disaster loan, and 81,000 
people in my State qualified and have received approval for a loan--
81,000. That is a huge number of homes. That is not all the homes which 
were destroyed. We had 250,000 homes destroyed. Of those, 81,000 
families qualified for a home loan through the Small Business 
Administration.
  It was painfully slow. It took months for these applications to get 
out, with us beating them every day and working with them and pushing, 
pushing, with Senator Kerry and Senator Snowe, who were, together, 
terrific to push the SBA. Then we got rid of the SBA Director, we got a 
new SBA Director, and they pushed those loans out the door. The good 
news is 81,000 people have gotten loans. The bad news is that as soon 
as these same people get their Road Home grants, which they are 
entitled to under another program we created, the SBA is interpreting 
their law so as to require these homeowners to immediately pay back 
their loan.
  This bill which I am sponsoring with Senator Lott will release the 
homeowners, the borrowers, from that obligation. They must repay the 
loan. This is not a loan-forgiveness program. If you borrowed money, 
you must repay it under the terms you borrowed it. This is not a 
charity. This is not loan forgiveness. You must repay it under the 
terms of your loan. But you don't have to pay it today. You don't have 
to pay it next week when you get your Road Home money. You can pay it 
under the terms that it was lent to you, whether it was 5 years or 20 
years, whether it was at 2 percent or 4 percent or 6 percent.
  Mr. President, 81,000 people in Louisiana and 31,000 people in 
Mississippi have been told: The good news is you got an SBA loan; the 
bad news is the minute you get your Road Home Program money from the 
Federal Government, you have to pay this loan in full.

  Believe me, this was not our intention when we passed these community 
development block grants. I do not believe there is a Senator in this 
Chamber who would expect that of a homeowner who has lost everything. 
In some cases, they had insurance. In some cases, they didn't. In most 
cases, neither their insurance nor the money we are giving them is 
making them whole. There is no coverage for contents. This is not for 
contents. Some people might have $100,000 of contents in their home. 
Some people might have $200,000 of contents. Some people might have 
only $25,000 of contents. We are not even covering contents.
  We are not covering the expedited or accelerated cost of labor and 
materials. So people are already with no coverage for contents. Unless 
they had insurance, they have lost that. We are not covering the 30-
percent increase in labor costs or the 30-percent increase in cost of 
supplies. That is not calculated.
  This loan is very important for people. It is saving many of them 
from bankruptcy. If they manage to get their loan, we most certainly do 
not want them to have to pay their loan back in full when they get 
their Road Home grant. This is for Louisiana and for Mississippi. If 
you add up 81,000 people in Louisiana and 31,000, this is over 100,000 
families--110,000 families. That is probably affecting more than a 
quarter of a million people. That is a lot of people.
  When this bill passes, which it will--it may not pass today, but I 
wish it would. I wish no one would object to it. But when this bill 
passes, 250,000 people are actually going to be able to see the light 
at the end of the tunnel, and they will be able to say: This is hard. I 
don't know if I can rebuild. I don't know if I want to rebuild. But at 
least I have a fighting chance to make that decision. If this bill does 
not pass, these 200,000-plus people who live in my State and 
Mississippi--I predict many of them will have to file bankruptcy.
  I have said this before and I am going to say it again. The people I 
represent who lived behind these levees were not sunbathing when these 
levees broke. They were loading tankers on the river. They were working 
at the docks. They were drilling and exploring for oil and gas in the 
gulf. They were going to work at hospitals and nursing homes and 
teaching and running our libraries. This is not a resort community. 
These levees were not protecting a beach. These levees were protecting 
a port, and the levees failed.
  In working-class neighborhoods, Black and White, in rich and poor 
neighborhoods, people's homes were destroyed, homes that had never had 
an inch of water. Let me repeat that. People's homes were destroyed, 
homes that had never had an inch of water. They were not in a flood 
plain.
  When you lose everything you have--and for most Americans, their 
largest

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asset is their home--it is our obligation to think about ways we can 
strengthen the insurance system; strengthen our levees so they do not 
break again and while people are struggling give them a hand.
  Again, I am not asking for loan forgiveness. They have to pay back 
every penny. But let's give them a fighting chance to pay it back, over 
10 years or 15 years. Let's not require them to take one grant program 
we have given them to build their home and the same day take it away 
because they have to fully pay their small business loan.
  I understand Senator Reid is going to call up this bill and try to 
get it passed. I surely hope nobody objects to it. It is a Landrieu-
Lott bill, with Senator Vitter as well. Senator Reid is going to call 
it up in a few minutes, and I hope nobody objects to it. But if they do 
object, I can promise you I am going to spend every day on the floor 
until this bill is passed, sometime before we go home--not this week 
but before we go home for the next break.
  I do not think this is unreasonable. We are going to ask for 
everybody's support. Senator Lott will be happy to explain, when he has 
an opportunity, about the 31,000 families in Mississippi. But I am 
going to leave this here, and Senator Reid is going to come down and 
ask it be passed. I hope we can get it done today. If not, we will ask 
for it tomorrow. If not, we will continue to ask for it until we get 
it.
  We are asking for fairness, not charity, and for justice for the 
people in the gulf coast.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                      ANIMAL FIGHTING PROHIBITION

  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise this evening to talk about House 
bill H.R. 137, which has a companion Senate bill, S. 261, the Animal 
Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act. This is legislation that both the 
House and Senate have had much discussion on in the last several years, 
and something I hope will make its way to the consent calendar and 
final action this evening.
  I come to the floor tonight as someone who has been a cosponsor of 
this legislation for several years now, and as someone who has seen the 
impact of animal fighting in the state of Washington where animal 
fighting organizations have not only been a source of all sorts of 
cruel and inhumane treatment of animals, but also other illegal 
activity. To me this is legislation that is much needed, and we have 
passed similar legislation in the State of Washington. It is something 
we should have a strong Federal statute on.
  During October of 2004, there was a major raid in Vancouver, WA, 
where police found 21 pit bulls, as well as training logs and other 
evidence of animal fighting. It got quite a bit of attention as well 
because there were very high-profile people involved with the animal 
fighting ring.
  There is a long list of other incidents that have happened in 
Washington State, other activity in Yakima, WA, where various animal 
fighting organizations were discovered by law enforcement who have done 
a terrific job of uprooting these organizations in our State. It is 
important we take an aggressive stance and pass this legislation.
  The House bill we are talking about, H.R. 137, recently passed the 
House of Representatives, I believe with over 300 cosponsors. I am sure 
it had quite a few others who actually supported the legislation as it 
passed. We have over 35 cosponsors here with S. 261.
  When I look at the legislative history of this bill, it has had 
remarkably broad bipartisan support. It was passed by both the House 
and the Senate in the past. It was passed in both Chambers in 2001 and 
then struck in the conference report. It passed in 2003 in the Senate. 
It passed in 2005 again in the Senate, a unanimous measure. As I 
mentioned, it passed the House of Representatives. I think it is 
fitting that it should be on our consent calendar and hopefully pass 
this body this evening.
  The bottom line is, there are many organizations across the country 
that have seen the inhumane treatment of animals and have supported 
this legislation. The American Veterinary Medical Association supports 
the bill, obviously. The National Sheriffs Association supports this 
legislation. Police departments have been working in every part of the 
country and have endorsed this legislation because they see what kind 
of criminal activity is associated with animal fighting--gambling, 
drugs, and in one case in Washington State actual murder. The Federal 
antianimal fighting legislation is important. While we already have a 
Federal statute on the books, what we don't have is a Federal statute 
that effectively helps law enforcement meet this growing challenge. 
That is, with a simple misdemeanor, which is currently on the Federal 
books, sometimes it takes law enforcement as many as 7 to 8 months to 
investigate these kinds of crimes. To investigate and put that kind of 
energy into fighting this kind of criminal activity in our States, and 
then to have a maximum penalty of only up to 1 year is not adequate.
  In fact, in Washington State, in response to the activities that 
occurred in Vancouver and other parts of our State, our Governor signed 
an antianimal fighting bill that has been a great model for what we 
should be doing at the Federal level. As Washington did, this bill 
would make sure this crime is a felony and that it has adequate 
penalties. In fact, when the current Federal animal fighting law was 
enacted in 1976, only one State made it a felony. Today dogfighting is 
a felony in 48 States. We need to make sure that it is also a felony at 
the Federal level for transporting these animals and products 
associated with animal fighting across State lines. In fact, we are 
seeing that in many cases.
  In Washington State and in Oregon, we have seen this activity, 
because people in several States are joining together to locate and to 
make a profit and make investments in these kinds of criminal 
activities.
  We want to make sure we are stamping out this activity. With this 
legislation, we believe we have a very good chance to say that the 
Federal Government views this kind of animal fighting as cruel and 
inhumane, that we consider it a serious criminal activity to drug and 
force animals to fight and then to enclose them in pits while 
spectators engage in all sorts of gambling, narcotics trafficking, 
public corruption, and, in some cases, even violence toward people. 
That is something we ought to take a tough stance against.
  I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. I hope we can 
consider it in tonight's consent calendar, given how the Judiciary 
Committee has supported this legislation, and how it has passed both 
the House and Senate in the past.

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