[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 168 (Thursday, December 27, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8425-S8427]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT--Resumed
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will proceed to the consideration
of H.R. 1, which the clerk will now report by title.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
A bill (H.R. 1) making appropriations for the Department of
Defense and the other departments and agencies of the
Government for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2011, and
for other purposes.
Pending:
Reid amendment No. 3395, in the nature of a substitute.
Amendment No. 3391 to Amendment No. 3395
(Purpose: In the nature of a substitute.)
Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3391.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Indiana [Mr. Coats] proposes an amendment
numbered 3391.
(The amendment is printed in the Record of December 17, 2012, under
``Text of Amendments.'')
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I am cognizant of the fact that we will
have a series of votes beginning in just 15 minutes, and so even though
the unanimous consent request on this amendment is for 30 minutes
equally divided, I am going to try to judiciously use this time between
myself and Senator Alexander to explain why we are offering this
amendment, and hopefully our colleagues will be persuaded to support us
when we vote on this probably tomorrow.
We are all, of course, sensitive to the pain and damage inflicted by
Mother Nature in the Northeast. In fact, some of the Northeast is
getting some more of that pain with a storm up there today.
No State or region in our country should be left to fend for itself
after a storm as devastating as Hurricane Sandy. It is important to
understand that many things have overwhelmed the ability of the States
and local communities to deal with some of the effects of this, and
that is why the Sandy emergency supplemental is before us attached to
H.R. 1 and why we will be voting on that, I assume, tomorrow.
There are two versions before us; one is the Senate Democrats'
emergency supplemental proposal. That totals $60.4 billion. It includes
nearly $13 billion in mitigation funding. That goes for the next storm,
not this storm. There is $3.46 billion for Army Corps of Engineers,
$500 million of which is projects from previous disasters; $3 billion
to repair or replace Federal assets that do not fall into the category
of emergency need. There is $56 million for tsunami cleanup on the west
coast, which, of course, does not relate to Sandy. There is a lot of
new authorizing language for reform of disaster relief programs, which
I would support through the regular process. But without having gone
through the authorizing committee, I don't think that is a good idea.
Our proposed alternative provides $23.8 billion in funding for the
next 3 months. We are not saying this is the be-all and end-all of what
Congress will ultimately fund to meet the needs of those who have been
impacted by Sandy. We are simply saying that before rushing to a
number, which has not been fully scrubbed, fully looked at, plans
haven't been fully developed yet--and that is understandable--we think
it most important we provide emergency funding for those in immediate
need over the next 3 months.
We have carefully worked with FEMA Director Fugate and we have worked
with Secretary Donovan at HUD. We have worked through the
Appropriations Committee to identify those specific needs that get to
the emergency situations under which this bill is titled. It provides
funding for States to allow them to begin to rebuild but also leaves us
time to review what additional funds might be needed.
So rather than throwing out a big number and simply saying let us see
what comes in under that number, let us look at the most immediate
needs that have to be funded now and provide a sufficient amount of
funds in order to do that. In fact, the amount we are providing would
extend, in terms of outlays, far beyond March 27, but we want those
mayors and we want those Governors to be able to begin the planning
process of looking how they would go forward. We also want, in respect
to our careful need, to carefully look at how we extend taxpayer
dollars.
We want to allow this 3-month period of time for which the relevant
committees in the Senate and the House of Representatives can look at
these plans, can document the request, can examine the priorities that
might be needed and then put a sensible plan in place that hopefully
will be an efficient and effective use of taxpayer dollars. Therefore,
we have struck from the Democratic proposal all moneys that would go to
mitigation funding, not saying mitigation funding isn't necessary but
simply saying it doesn't meet the emergency need this first 3-month
proposal addresses. This will give States time to begin to rebuild but
also allow us time to review what additional funds are needed for that
rebuilding.
We don't allow authorizing language because we don't believe in
authorizing something on an emergency appropriations bill that ought to
go through the
[[Page S8426]]
authorizing committee. We focus specifically on Sandy-related needs.
There are a number of other needs, as I have just addressed, that are
perhaps legitimate, that ought to come through the regular process.
With that, let me turn to my colleague from Tennessee who has been
working with me. I would say our Appropriations Committee, our
Republican staff, has gone through this very carefully and tried to
identify how we can get money for the essential needs to those people,
to those communities that need them now. We want to be responsible in
terms of spending taxpayer dollars by having a period of time in which
we can look at the plans for the future and see what additional funds
might be needed.
With that, I yield for the Senator from Tennessee.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I am here to join the Senator from
Indiana, and I think I can presumptively speak for everybody in this
body. We want to help the people in New York, New Jersey, and other
Northeastern States that were hurt by Sandy. We have had some pretty
tough disasters in Tennessee as well. We had a 1,000-year flood 2 years
ago--not a 100-year flood but a 1,000-year flood. We knew the Federal
Government wasn't going to make us whole. We had billions of dollars of
damage, 52 counties hurt, but we knew the Federal Government could help
and it did help and it helped swiftly and that is what we want to do in
this case.
With all the talk about the money we are about to appropriate, I
think it is important to remind those who live in New York, New Jersey,
and Connecticut what is already being done with money we have already
appropriated. For example, there are 4,402 FEMA personnel working in
those States. There are 514,343 citizens of those States who have
already filed individual assistance applications. This is when your
home is gone and you need money for rent or you need money to rebuild.
Those applications are in.
Already $1.13 billion has been paid. There are 24 disaster recovery
centers in New York, 24 in New Jersey and 1 in Connecticut. $150
million in disaster loans have already been approved by the Small
Business Administration, and more than 360,000 applications have been
sent out.
The important fact to know is that help for victims of Hurricane
Sandy doesn't depend on what we are about to do tonight. We already
have money in the bank. We already have FEMA people on the ground.
There is already help available. In my experience in our Tennessee
disasters, that help comes in a matter of days, in most cases.
So what are we about to do? As Senator Coats said--and I wish to
congratulate him for making a very sensible approach toward this--what
we are about to say is this is $24 billion more for the accounts that
are already helping people in the areas hurt by Sandy.
For example, there is over $5 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund.
That is just to make sure there is enough money to fund those half
million requests that are already in. There is $9.7 billion for flood
insurance. If you have flood insurance, the Federal Government will be
able to pay your claim. There is $3.4 billion to repair roads and
bridges. There is $2 billion for community development block grants. We
found in Tennessee that is especially flexible money, which is very
helpful. That is $2 billion between now and March. There is also $500
million for the Small Business Administration.
So what is not included in the proposal we are offering. It doesn't
include items that are not related to Hurricane Sandy. This is supposed
to be about Hurricane Sandy. It doesn't make changes to the Stafford
Act. What that means is we don't go in, in this emergency
appropriations bill for the next 3 months, and make wholesale changes
in the law, make things permanent that are temporary, and streamline
regulations. They all may be good things to do, but we have a process
for making legislative changes.
We don't include $13 billion for unspecified future projects. They
may be good projects, but if they are, we have a process to consider
those projects. The distinguished Senator from California and I are the
ranking members of one of the subcommittees that does some of that. We
expect to do that next year. So we are filling the accounts that are
already being used to help many people.
Finally, if I may say something about process--which I think would be
more interesting to the Senators than to the people of New York and New
Jersey--but it is important to know this bill came to the floor in
record time. No one objected to its coming to the floor.
It was virtually unanimous, before we even started voting on
amendments, that we agreed to invoke cloture and to have a final vote
of 51 votes so the bill in some form will pass. In return for that,
those of us on the minority side, so far as I know, got the amendments
we wanted.
I simply want to say to my colleagues that it is still far from a
perfect process in our effort to continue to improve the way the Senate
works. The bill should have gone to committee to begin with. It did
not. It could have been amended there. When it came to the floor on
Monday, and we said come right on, no one objected to that, we should
have started voting. We could have voted for 3 days on this bill:
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, instead of running around trying to see
who had amendments. Let us just put them up and vote on them. Then we
should have had the cloture vote which, as I said, was done with, I
think, only one dissenting objection.
So the process has been better but not as good as it should be for
the Senate. But Senator Coats' substitute is the right proposal. It is
24 billion more dollars now for the accounts that are already being
used to help victims of Sandy.
The last thing I would say is this. When there is an emergency,
Congress has always acted. We don't always do everything in the first
week or second or third week because we already have money in the bank
for those needs. But in Katrina, for example, there were nine different
supplemental appropriations bills over time. The next wave of
appropriations requests can come to us, and we will go to work on them
in a few weeks. We can get to work in the committee right away, for
example, and Senator Feinstein and I could work on it a few weeks after
that. Then the majority leader will bring the bills to the floor--which
he did not last year--and we can vote on them and have the second round
of funding.
So I thank the Senator from Indiana, Mr. Coats, for his hard work on
this. We want the people of New York and New Jersey to know we want to
help them, we are helping them, and will continue to be interested in
the things that need to be done. It will not make them whole, but it
will help them get on their feet, just as we have in Tennessee and just
as we have in other States across the country after large disasters.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
Mr. COATS. Mr. President, may I inquire as to how much time is still
available before the call up of the vote on the FISA legislation?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana has approximately 2
minutes remaining.
Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I would like to use those 2 minutes, if I
could, to sum up.
I thank the Senator from Tennessee for his support throughout this
whole process. He has been instrumental in helping us work through this
to find what we believe is a reasonable way to move forward and provide
that immediate emergency help that is so badly needed up in the
Northeast.
Let me just give one example of how we came to these numbers. We do
provide, through the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development
appropriations, $32 million for repairs of Amtrak's infrastructure,
dewatering of tunnels, electrical systems, overhead wires. These are
immediate needs, and we want to provide funding for them.
There is funding for highway emergency relief directly related to
Sandy. We fund for that. We fund for public transportation
infrastructure, immediate needs between now and March. Again, we are
not saying there might not be need for more funding after this, but we
will at least have had the opportunity to vet that and look to ensure
that the money is correctly spent. What we didn't do under that
appropriations was $30 million of damages
[[Page S8427]]
that come under the FAA existing budget, the funding for highway
projects not related to Sandy that are in the Democratic bill and
mitigation projects unrelated to Sandy.
Again, we are not against mitigation, but we are saying let us focus
on Sandy. Let us get the emergency help to those who need it now. Let
us get it there in an ample amount of time and money for them. Then let
us take up, through the regular process and we carefully examine how we
spend the taxpayers' money, providing those needed funds for the real
emergency but not using this as a bill to lard up with all kinds of
excessive spending that isn't needed for this particular emergency.
With that, I yield back the remainder of my time.
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