[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 117 (Friday, July 20, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9651-S9652]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          COMPETENT LEADERSHIP

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, a number of us have been concerned about 
the issue of competence for some long while. I take no pleasure in 
coming to the floor to point out someone's flaws or weaknesses or areas 
where we are not succeeding, but it seems to me that this country has 
to be brutally honest with itself, and that includes this 
administration, in terms of what it is doing, how well, what kinds of 
changes are necessary to fix what is wrong to safeguard and provide 
security for this country.
  One of the examples of serious trouble with respect to solving 
problems and addressing issues was the response to Hurricane Katrina. 
This devastating hurricane hit our country, and it laid bare a whole 
area of the gulf coast. It was unbelievable what it did to families, 
homes, and structures. The consequences of it and the cost of it and 
its toll on human lives and treasure are not even yet calculated.
  I think everybody in this country saw what happened as a result of 
the response of FEMA. I come from a State in which flooding 10 years 
ago caused the evacuation of a city of 50,000 people--the largest 
evacuation of an American city since the Civil War. We understand FEMA. 
They rushed in in the middle of that unbelievable flood in the Red 
River, where almost the entire city of Grand Forks, ND, was evacuated. 
FEMA rushed in. Under James Lee Witt, it had become a world-class 
organization. It did an unbelievable job. I cannot say enough about 
that organization. FEMA was first rate. I think everybody in that city 
who was helped by that organization understood the quality of the 
Federal Emergency Management Agency.
  Fast forward and discover that the major appointments to FEMA under 
this administration were political cronies who had no experience in 
emergency response or preparedness. So it wasn't surprising that FEMA 
deteriorated dramatically as an agency, and its response to Hurricane 
Katrina was abysmal.
  I want to describe it with one photograph, if I might. This describes 
what happened with respect to Katrina. I am describing this because 
this week something happened that finally ended the chapter on this 
sorry story. This man is Paul Mullinax, sitting in front of an 18-wheel 
truck in Florida. His truck is a refrigerated truck, and it is used to 
haul ice. Katrina hit, and one of the needs in the deep South, when 
people and property and everything was devastated and they were trying 
to figure out how to deal with it, they needed ice in the middle of 
that scorching heat. So FEMA contracted with truckers to haul ice in 
18-wheel trucks, refrigerated trucks, to help the victims of Katrina.
  Here is Paul Mullinax in the photo. Paul was in Florida at the time. 
He got a call and was invited to contract to haul ice. He drove his 18-
wheeler to New York City and picked up a load of ice. Let me tell you 
where he went. I have a map. Paul went from Florida up to New York City 
to pick up some ice--in Newburg, NY. Then they told him to go to 
Carthage, MO, with the ice. He went there, to Missouri, to deliver ice. 
FEMA said, when he got there: No, we want you to go to Montgomery, AL, 
with your truckload of ice for the victims of Katrina.
  Then he got to Montgomery, AL, and here is what happened to him. He, 
with over 100 other truckers, refrigerated trucks holding ice for the 
victims of Katrina, sat for 12 days. This is a picture of Paul Mullinax 
sitting in his lawn chair, with a little grill. For 12 days, he sat 
there. Finally, they said to him: We want you to take your ice to 
Massachusetts.
  Think of this. Taxpayers paid over $15,000 for this load of ice. He 
was told the ice was for the victims of Katrina, and hundreds of other 
truckers had the same circumstance. He was sent from Missouri to 
Alabama, sat for a dozen days on the tarmac of a military installation, 
and then told he should take that ice up to Massachusetts and put it in 
storage.
  This week, 2 years later, after spending over $20 million, that ice 
was taken out of storage in Massachusetts and discarded because they 
felt it was probably contaminated after 2 years. So finally it ends, 
the saga about hauling ice to the victims of Katrina.
  How do I know Paul Mullinax? I asked Paul Mullinax to come to 
Washington to testify about what happened. He didn't want to do it. I 
sat in a parking lot of a grocery store one Sunday on the phone with 
Paul Mullinax and said: Paul, I want you to come to a hearing we are 
holding to tell this story. People need to understand what is wrong. 
Only by understanding what is wrong can we get this fixed.
  Paul came up to Washington, DC, and testified before a hearing and 
told us what had happened. Some people wouldn't believe it. You are 
going to haul ice from New York to Missouri to Mississippi and then are 
told to offload it at a warehouse in Massachusetts, ice for the victims 
of Katrina? If there is one story that demonstrates the complete absurd 
incompetence of the response to Hurricane Katrina, it is the story of 
Paul Mullinax, a good American who wanted to do the right thing, and in 
contracting with the Federal agency that was incompetent came up with 
this absurd experience.
  I have tried since to find out who was the decision maker in 
Government, who decides we are going to haul ice from New York to 
Massachusetts through Missouri and Mississippi that is supposed to go 
to victims of Hurricane Katrina, and we are going to spend all of that 
money and do it incompetently, who was responsible, who made those 
decisions, and you cannot find out who that unnamed person is who makes 
that kind of Byzantine decision that in my judgment fleeces the 
American taxpayer, that injures those who were victims of Hurricane 
Katrina by not getting the ice to the victims who needed it.
  I wanted my colleagues to know, because I have spoken about this 
before, that this week at last--at long, long last--the ice that was 
put in storage as a result of this gross incompetence has now been 
discarded because they felt perhaps after 2 years the ice was 
contaminated.
  It is a sad story, in my judgment, of the fleecing of America. My 
hope is we have sufficiently embarrassed and sufficiently made 
accountable those in FEMA and in this administration so that this will 
never, ever happen again. It is not what the taxpayers deserve, and it 
certainly isn't what the victims of Hurricane Katrina deserve.
  That same incompetence, regrettably, is steeped in other areas of an 
administration that, as I indicated as of Wednesday morning's interview 
with Ms. Townsend, seems content to ignore facts.
  I have come to the floor on occasion and spoken well of those who I 
think do a good job in this administration and elsewhere. I wish I 
could do that this morning. It is very important for this Congress and 
this country, when we see incompetence and when we see we are 
developing a strategy that doesn't work and is not going to work, that 
we must change course, we must expect better.
  My hope is a group of us in Congress, through the hearings I have 
held on these issues and through the discussions of Senator Reid and 
others who have worked on it in our caucus in the last couple of weeks, 
my hope is that we will change course with respect to the issue of 
Iraq, for example, which is the overriding important issue.
  I hope one of the changes in course will be we decide our priorities 
are to

[[Page S9652]]

fight terrorism first, and that is not what we are now doing. Let us 
decide to fight terrorism first. That ought to be the goal. If the 
terrorist camps are reconstituted, if the threat to our country from 
al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, and al-Zawahiri represents a greater threat 
now, then we must, it seems to me, change course to address that 
threat, and that threat requires us to fight terrorism first.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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