[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 155 (Saturday, September 27, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Page S9981]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      HIGHER EDUCATION DISASTER AND EMERGENCY RELIEF LOAN PROGRAM

  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, this past August the President signed 
into law the Higher Education Opportunity Act, which reauthorized 
programs for postsecondary and higher education. Contained within the 
reauthorization is the Education Disaster and Emergency Relief Loan 
Program. The bill established a loan program within the U.S. Department 
of Education to provide critically needed low interest guaranteed loans 
to institutions in the event of catastrophic natural or man-made 
disasters.
  The colleges and universities in Louisiana, particularly those in the 
New Orleans area, remain in many ways financially crippled by Hurricane 
Katrina. Three years after Katrina and Rita devastated Louisiana and 
Mississippi these institutions still have nearly $700 million in 
unrecovered losses. The estimates for Gustav and Ike are still not 
finalized but at this stage the damage is purported to be at least $46 
million to state colleges and universities alone.
  Before Katrina, the 11 colleges and universities in the New Orleans 
area educated 70,000 students. Today that number is only 50,000 but it 
continues to slowly rebound. This growth comes despite the fact that 
our institutions of higher education experienced more than $1 billion 
in physical damages and operational losses due to the 2005 hurricanes 
and have recovered less than half of those losses. Higher education 
institutions are the largest employers in New Orleans both before and 
after Katrina. The higher education industry in New Orleans continues 
to attract millions of research dollars and supports industries as 
diverse as biotechnology, aerospace and medicine. The work of each 
institution in the city can be seen in every aspect of the region's 
recovery, from the redesign of the city's troubled public schools to 
coastal restoration and hurricane protection to the provision of health 
care across the region. They engage in this important work even as they 
continue to struggle with mounting revenue losses, buildings that 
remain in disrepair due to flooding and the loss of key faculty and 
staff.
  I call today on the Secretary of Education to make the Education 
Disaster Loan program a top regulatory priority. It is my understanding 
that some Department of Education officials have said that they will 
not promulgate regulations on any newly create programs in the Higher 
Education Act until funds are appropriated. This simply is not 
acceptable. This issue has become a major roadblock in the current 
disaster funding process, and it is my hope that the Secretary and the 
Department will move expeditiously to establish regulations so that the 
program may provide crucial assistance to the colleges and universities 
impacted by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Ike and the Midwest 
Floods.
  This is a program I was proud to author, design, shepherd through the 
last Congress to help all the colleges and universities that have been 
so hard hit, and a portion of the community development block grant 
loans that we have provided could possibly go to help our universities.

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