[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 140 (Tuesday, September 20, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Page S5732]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  FEMA

  Mr. REID. Madam President, on Wednesday the House, we are told, will 
send us a continuing resolution to fund the government through November 
18. I was disappointed to see the House shortchanged the Federal 
Emergency Management Agency. We have been told specifically what they 
intend to do and it is a real shortchange, by failing to provide the 
funding to adequately help Americans whose lives have been devastated 
by floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes. It is staggering to understand 
the depth of the concern people have.
  Yesterday morning I received a call from Kent Conrad, Senator from 
North Dakota, who proceeded to explain to me about a city in North 
Dakota by the name of Minot, a town of about 40,000 people. Twenty-five 
percent of the homes in Minot, ND, are underwater. Most of those 
underwater are ruined forever. These are not big mansions. They are 
homes people have lived in, sometimes for a very long period of time.
  Yesterday I was speaking to Senator Hoeven, who certainly knows North 
Dakota as well as anyone. He served as Governor there and is now in the 
Senate. We were talking about the flood. Of course, one of the things 
people are saying is: Why didn't Congress and the President plan for 
all this? As Senator Hoeven described in some detail, how do you 
estimate something that has never, ever happened before? Not a 50-year 
flood took place in North Dakota, not a 100-year flood, not a 500-year 
flood--it is something that has never happened, ever. This in spite of 
the fact that they built some dams, even some in Canada, to stop the 
flooding. It didn't matter, this was so immense. It had never happened 
before in North Dakota. A sparsely populated State has been devastated 
by these floods--natural, you say, but certainly unusual floods that 
have ravaged that State.
  That is not the only State. Many States have been hammered hard. Who 
would ever have thought, a year ago, that a relatively small community, 
Joplin, MO, would be hit by almost 300-mile-an-hour winds. The winds 
didn't just whip through, they roiled around there for such a time that 
they basically destroyed that town.
  There are many other examples of what has happened, being unable to 
determine what would happen in the future. Suffice it to say we 
provided funds last week here in the Senate to help Americans whose 
lives had been devastated by floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other 
natural calamities. In a bipartisan bill for FEMA and other agencies, 
we passed that help disaster victims need--an additional $6.9 billion. 
That is probably not enough, frankly. After the Appropriations 
Committee did their work, reported the bill out, a bill of some $6 
billion, I asked the different subcommittees to find out what 
additionally was needed. They came back with another $3 billion. We 
pared that down because we wanted to keep within the agreement we had 
from the Deficit Reduction Act which set that at $7 billion, and we are 
slightly under that. That is why we came in with that figure.
  That funding, $6.9 billion, while it does not give everyone 
everything, will help rebuild after several costly natural disasters, 
not the least of which is Hurricane Irene.
  Tomorrow when the Senate receives the House bill to fund the 
government for 6 more weeks, we will amend it with the language the 
Senate passed, the Senate FEMA legislation. This year President Obama 
has declared disasters in all but two States, and FEMA is quickly 
running out of money to help American families and communities recover.
  I talked to Mr. Fugate, the head of FEMA, last Thursday. He said they 
have enough money to last probably until September 25th. That is even 
on a very narrow plane that they are working on. They have stopped the 
work in Joplin, MO. They have stopped the work because of the 
devastation that happened in the gulf previously. The only money they 
are spending now deals with Tropical Storm Lee and Hurricane Irene. 
They have no more money. They are out of money. So it is desperate.
  I know this amendment will enjoy the support of my Republican 
colleagues as it did last week. We had 10 who stepped forward and it 
was very important that they did that. Last week, a bipartisan group of 
Senators agreed that helping communities destroyed by natural disasters 
was too important to let politics get in the way.

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