[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 192 (Monday, November 27, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7325-S7326]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                      Puerto Rico Recovery Effort

  Madam President, I want to discuss another issue.
  What do you think it would be like to be in your home for 3 months 
without electricity when all of your home appliances and all of your 
daily routines have been built around the fact that electricity has 
provided the power to run your home in the way that you would expect?
  Do you know that half of the people of Puerto Rico, 3 months after 
Hurricane Maria, still do not have electricity? Is it any wonder that 
160,000 people--our fellow citizens from Puerto Rico--have now chosen 
to get on an airplane and go to the State of Florida? Is it any stretch 
of the imagination that there will not be hundreds of thousands more? 
They see a land that was devastated by a category 4 hurricane--that 
verged on a category 5--and that covered the entire island, with remote 
parts of the island having been completely cut off for 2\1/2\ weeks 
from transportation to get there, except by air, like the town of 
Utuado, which is up in the mountains, that I visited shortly after the 
hurricane.
  Is it any wonder that people like them are now being very creative 
and very inventive? There are neighbors helping neighbors. They are all 
coming together. But they have been without electricity for such a long 
period of time that the opportunities for jobs are drying up, 
businesses cannot open, and commerce has slowed. With a $250 plane 
ticket, in 2 hours they can be in Florida, and, indeed, that is what 
has happened--160,000, as of now, just to Florida. How many have gone 
to New York and to other States? We do not have that calculation, but 
we expect several hundred thousand more to go.
  For all who come here, the island of Puerto Rico is their home. They 
want to return, but is there going to be a quick resumption of 
business? In its contracting through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 
is FEMA going to get the electricity back up? Are there

[[Page S7326]]

going to be jobs? Are we going to change the tax law so that Puerto 
Rico does, in fact, have the incentives that it used to have in the 
past that had taken pharmaceutical companies there and rum companies 
there? A lot of those tax incentives have gone away, and we ought to be 
considering that in this tax bill. We ought to be considering the long-
term cost that it is going to take to help restore the island. Until 
that is done, what do you think people have done? This is exactly what 
they have done, and they are going to continue to come.
  As a result, we have a different problem in a State in which so many 
of their families already live and where they have been living with 
relatives. Now it is time for them to be able to have their own 
families and their own places to live. Yet we do not have the 
provisions in order to give them the financial support to be able to 
afford housing. Suppose 300,000 Puerto Ricans go to Florida alone. Do 
they have the money? Are they able to get jobs right away so that they 
will have the money for housing? That is why we are going to have to 
have financial incentives.
  That is why, in a bill that was filed last week by this Senator, 
along with several others, there is a provision--if we can pass this 
legislation--for HUD, or the Department of Housing and Urban 
Development, to have the financial wherewithal to then supply housing 
needs, many times through subsidized housing, in the case of an 
incident like this hurricane, in which an emergency has occurred and 
has caused a huge dislocation of people to another State.
  Since it is going to be hard to get legislation like this passed in a 
timely fashion and the need is desperate right now and since the last 
supplemental emergency appropriation for all of the hurricanes did not 
include the housing part for the ones who are going to Florida, in the 
meantime, in this next supplemental that will come just before 
Christmas--emergency supplemental funding--we will need to provide 
that.
  Then the question will be this: Where, for example, in Central 
Florida--in the Orlando metro area--will they actually be able to find 
housing that will be available without their having to drive hundreds 
of miles to find housing that will be affordable, even with additional 
assistance? The people who can work this problem out are in the local 
governments. They are the ones who know best the situation.
  As we get ready before Christmas for a final appropriations bill with 
emergency supplemental funding because of all of the hurricanes, which, 
indeed, will come--it will just be the next installment of many 
installments to come in the new year--let us remember that housing is 
going to be critical for a huge number of people who have been 
dislocated and have to strike out and find new lives, new jobs, and new 
places to call home, which clearly means that they will have to have 
places to call home, and those are places to live--housing. It is an 
urgent need, and it is one that is critical. This Congress has to face 
it before the holidays.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moran). The Senator from Ohio.