[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 20 (Tuesday, January 30, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S560-S564]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Disaster Aid

  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I am absolutely shocked that FEMA has 
announced that on Wednesday it will stop distributing food and water to 
Puerto Rico. Cutting this aid to the people of Puerto Rico, while still 
almost a third of them do not have electricity, is unconscionable and a 
travesty.
  I urge the administration to reverse this disastrous decision 
immediately and to continue providing the people of Puerto Rico with 
the help they need as they are trying to recover from two disastrous 
hurricanes.
  This Senator has been speaking on the floor over and over of their 
desperate needs, but here I am again to remind our colleagues that 
Puerto Ricans are American citizens, that they are just like the people 
of any State, including those in the States of Kentucky, Texas, 
Wyoming, and in so many of the other States where needs might be 
forgotten. They are our fellow countrymen, and they deserve the same 
care and protection that we would provide any other citizen in his time 
of need. They have supplied some of the greatest warriors of our U.S. 
military in World War I, World War II, Korea, and on up to the present.
  If the people of any other State were being neglected like the people 
of Puerto Rico have been in the wake of this storm, there would be an 
absolute outrage in this Senate. The people of Puerto Rico need help, 
but they are not the only ones. Millions of people were affected by the 
storms that hit last year in my State of Florida, in the State of 
Texas, in, of course, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and in Puerto Rico, and 
many were affected by the wildfires in California.
  Right now, many of them are desperately waiting for the Senate to act 
on a disaster supplemental package to help them recover. We are trying 
to pass it, and it keeps getting shuffled off into the future. We are 
trying to add to the supplemental--the necessary disaster aid that is 
needed in agriculture, particularly for the citrus industry in 
Florida--the financial assistance that is needed in Puerto Rico. I hope 
our colleagues in the Senate will understand the urgency of this 
matter. We cannot keep pushing this off into the future. The need to 
act is now.
  In addition, people in Florida are struggling. We should not neglect 
what is happening on the mainland. It is true in Texas. It is true in 
California. It is true in Florida. It is true on the islands. The storm 
destroyed homes and damaged apartments all around Florida, but we 
haven't seen any real attempt to address the housing needs of the 
hurricane victims in the State--by the way, including those coming to 
Florida from Puerto Rico.
  Florida received about $600 million out of the $7.4 billion, which 
was made available in the CDBG-DR, in the September supplemental. What 
percentage is that of $7.4 billion? It is much less than 10 percent. It 
defies comprehension. Florida was one of the places that

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was the hardest hit last year. Hurricane Irma virtually covered up the 
entire peninsula of Florida. It wreaked havoc all across the State. Add 
to that the aftereffects of Hurricane Maria, with thousands fleeing 
Puerto Rico and going to Florida, and we have a real housing crisis on 
our hands. The $600 million, which is to help those who have been left 
bare by two of the most devastating storms to hit the country in 
decades, is a drop in the bucket. We should be able to get people the 
help they need in the time they need it. It is required now--not a year 
later, not 6 months later, but now.
  Schools in Florida have been stretched thin in their having enrolled 
nearly 12,000 students who have evacuated Puerto Rico and the U.S. 
Virgin Islands. Every child has a right to a quality education, but the 
school systems cannot do it on their own, not after a natural disaster. 
Dealing with such a large influx of students in a short period requires 
extra resources.
  The House has passed a package that includes $2.9 billion for 
education funding. We desperately need it. The schools and students 
need this aid now. We cannot keep kicking the can down the road. Their 
educations cannot wait. You cannot keep relying on teachers to go out 
and get the extra supplies for them.
  I mentioned our citrus growers. The industry has already been 
devastated by a bacteria called greening. When it gets into the phloem 
sap of the tree, it kills the tree in 5 years. We are not going to have 
a citrus industry if we can't find the cure for that. With the extra 
care of the groves, they have been able to nurture back crops. So here 
are all of these crops of oranges and grapefruit on the trees, and 
along comes Irma. In some groves, not only have 100 percent of the 
crops been blown off the trees, but the trees have been uprooted. That 
is why we desperately need the money--to clean up and replant.
  The farmers in Florida suffered at least $2.5 billion in losses when 
Hurricane Irma tore through the State, and that included a lot of our 
citrus. Citrus alone experienced $760 million in losses. That is on top 
of the difficulties that they were having already with the bacteria.
  The USDA is estimating that Florida growers will only harvest 46 
million boxes this season. Get this: 10 years ago, there were 203 
million boxes of citrus harvested. A decade before that, there were 244 
million boxes of oranges harvested. For months our farmers have been 
told to wait their turn. Some of them are going bankrupt. They have 
waited long enough. They need the help now. We just have to act on this 
disaster bill.
  Additionally, it has been over 100 days since Hurricane Maria hit 
Puerto Rico. Over 30 percent of the island remains without power, and 
parts of the island still lack running water. Some people have running 
water still, but they cannot drink it. They have to boil it.
  When I was there in the little mountain town of Utuado, the source of 
water about 2 weeks after the hurricane--with the roads cut off, the 
only source of outside help was by helicopter, and the running water 
that they had was from a pipe that was coming out of the mountain, the 
mountain water draining down. I don't want to mince words here. We have 
a full-blown humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico right now. My 
colleague, Marco Rubio from Florida, has been there also, and he is 
here to testify to the same thing.
  As a result, recent estimates suggest that over 300,000 Puerto Ricans 
may have moved to Florida. Some are fortunate enough to move in with 
relatives, but others are living in motels that line the I-4 corridor. 
Some are living out of their cars. This is absolutely heartbreaking. 
How can we fail fellow American citizens like this? Yet, given the 
current situation, the administration thinks that now, today, is the 
appropriate time to cut off food and water for the people of Puerto 
Rico.
  There is no common sense here. FEMA needs to continue to provide food 
and water to the island until, at the very least, all of the island has 
access to potable water and electricity. They are suffering, and while 
the administration is trying to abandon the responsibility of the 
United States to Puerto Rico, the House aid package shortchanges 
recovery efforts on the island. We must enhance it in the Senate 
package.
  For instance, it fails to address the current Medicaid crisis that is 
just a month away. If nothing is done, Puerto Rico's Medicaid Program 
is going to run out of money. Congress must act; otherwise, over 1 
million U.S. citizens will be denied healthcare coverage when they need 
it the most.
  It has been over a month since the House passed the disaster bill. We 
haven't seen any action. The longer we wait, the more people suffer. It 
is clear the government is not working the way it should. We need to 
turn the corner, and it needs to start with this disaster bill being 
bumped up in the Senate and then quickly passed.
  I beg our colleagues, and Senator Marco Rubio joins me: Let's take up 
this bill. Let's fix the deficiencies, and let's pass it immediately.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I want to begin by thanking Senator Nelson, 
the senior Senator from our State, for once again raising this on the 
floor. I am glad to be able to follow him and to make many of the same 
points about the importance of acting on this.
  The Presiding Officer is from a State that has been impacted by 
storms. He knows that long after the cameras leave and long after the 
stories have been written, real people's lives have been disrupted, 
sometimes permanently, certainly in ways that we don't think about. We 
have come to think about hurricane damage as roofs being ripped off of 
buildings and trees in the road, and once those are picked up, 
everything is back to normal. What we don't recognize is that 
underneath all of that is the long-term damage done to a small business 
that went 2 weeks without any sort of income, so they closed.
  There is the impact we see in the Florida Keys, where there are a lot 
of people, for example, who have used their retirement savings to buy a 
small property that they rent out in the Florida Keys. It is very 
common. They buy a small townhouse, they rent it out in the winter for 
people to stay there, and then they use it in the summer for their 
family.
  Well, guess what. This winter they are probably not getting a lot of 
visitors. In some cases--I know of one in particular--there is all this 
debris from the storm that is sitting in the canal. It is not very 
attractive for a visitor to come to the Keys and stay in a townhouse 
where they can't even go out into the ocean because the canals and the 
waterways that take them out have refrigerators floating in them and 
have all kind of debris in them. By the way, there is still debris 
there from previous storms, almost 15 years--10 years ago.
  What does that mean? That means the owner of the unit doesn't have 
the rent they were using to pay the mortgage. She might be a teacher or 
he might be a firefighter, and now they are not getting the income they 
were counting on to make the mortgage, so they potentially could fall 
behind and could lose this rental property that they had invested in 
for their family. These are not rich people. These are people who had 
an investment for the future and had a good business model until the 
storm came. That is not measured anywhere, but that is real harm.
  The small businesses have been harmed. The Florida Keys, in 
particular, is a place that has had lot of small businesses that have 
been there for a long time. Some of these places have gone months 
without clients. If that person doesn't come and rent out that unit I 
just described, that means that person isn't using the fuel from the 
local gas station, isn't eating at the local restaurants, and isn't 
contributing to the local economy.
  To top it off, it is so expensive. Imagine if you are a worker at one 
of these buildings making $15 an hour. It is so expensive. They already 
had a housing problem, and this has made it worse. So it would be a 
mistake to say that the hurricane damage is over, and the effort to 
address it ends the minute the trees are removed from the road and the 
roofs are tarped and repaired. It goes on for a while.
  In the case of this particular storm, Florida was also impacted by 
the impact that Maria had on Puerto Rico. As

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Senator Nelson just outlined, up to 300,000 American citizens--I say 
that because there are still a lot of people wondering, why are we 
giving aid to Puerto Rico? Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, and its 
residents are U.S. citizens. There are 300,000 U.S. citizens from 
Puerto Rico who have moved to Florida. They enrich our State, but our 
schools weren't counting on the kids, so they have to scramble to deal 
with that.
  Our housing stock--I met with a group of people on Friday. We still 
have people living in hotels who have been there for 3 or 4 months. 
Even if they wanted to go out and find an apartment, there is nothing 
available. There are all sorts of challenges. We have heard stories, 
for example, that they have to pay a $75 application fee for each one 
of the housing units they apply for, even if they are turned down. Just 
figure that out. If someone applies to just three or four of them, that 
is a lot of money out of pocket for someone who has already lost 
everything in the storm. Florida is facing that as well.
  I am disappointed. If someone had told me that we would get to the 
last week of January without taking up disaster relief, I would have 
been surprised because we had a chance to actually address this at the 
end of last year. The House sent over a bill that didn't go far enough. 
The Senate had ideas about how to make it better, and then for reasons 
involving leverage and using it as a tool to get people to vote for 
CRs--short-term spending at the end--it has been held up. That is 
unfortunate because these problems are only getting worse, not better, 
as time goes on.
  Senator Nelson talked about the citrus industry. One of our signature 
crops, if not our signature crop, was already being challenged by 
citrus greening, which is a terrible disease. Senator Nelson and I went 
to some of those groves together, and there are growers who basically 
were already hurting. They have lost everything for this year. There is 
no money coming in. The fruit is gone. Once that fruit touches the 
ground and that ground is wet, you can't sell it. The trees are 
damaged. It is not as though we can just buy a new tree at Walmart, and 
in 1 year it produces. It has to put it in the ground, and it takes 5 
years before it will start to produce. They are hurting, and they are 
wondering, should I replant? Is this a good business for me to be in?
  Some of these families have been in citrus for three or four or five 
generations, and this could be the end, not just the end for them but 
the end of Florida citrus. We helped them in the tax bill with the 
ability to immediately expense replanting, but that will not be enough. 
That is why this package has to include USDA resources to help replace 
these lost trees and rehabilitate the groves that were flooded. This is 
critical and essential to our food supply.
  The Army Corps of Engineers plays a huge role in the State of 
Florida. For example, there is the Herbert Hoover Dike, which is a dike 
on Lake Okeechobee that would prevent a catastrophic flooding event, 
should the lake levels rise too high. We have people living just south 
of it, and what happened, almost a century ago, is that people died 
because of flooding there. So this dike was built. It has been found to 
be and rated among the most vulnerable water infrastructure projects in 
the Nation, and we are lucky that it wasn't breached in the storm, but 
it could have been, had the rainfall been located at the right place at 
the right time. It has been the priority of our delegation for a long 
time to expedite the construction of rehabilitation to strengthen that 
dike. This is a good opportunity to do that because there will be other 
storms. Because the project was delayed when the storm hit, this is a 
chance to finish that role.
  Other parts that are critical to Florida's economy are beach 
renourishment and intracoastal navigation projects. These are hugely 
important and not just what makes Florida an attractive place to live; 
it is the reason people visit. Some of these beaches were severely 
eroded. Particularly in Northeast Florida, there is no beach, and the 
water is coming up to the edge of the property lines. If there is no 
beach, the hotels and the condominiums that rent out on that beach do 
not have visitors. People will not go there unless there is sand on the 
beach, and the erosion that happens in a storm like this needs to be 
fixed.
  Of course, we have all been engaged, and I hope all are committed to 
our Everglades restoration projects. The Everglades are some of the 
most unique environments on the planet. They happen to be in the United 
States and happen to be in our home State. In these Everglades 
restoration projects, we want to continue to make progress toward our 
goal of saving them.
  By the way, the Everglades are a source of water for over 8 million 
Floridians. So I hope the disaster funding also addresses all the work 
that was destroyed and the damage that happened to a lot of the 
restoration projects that were in place.
  I will not go deep into education because Senator Nelson has already 
addressed that, but suffice it to say we had thousands of students who 
were displaced, and we add to that thousands of people from Puerto Rico 
whom the school districts welcome but weren't counting on. Now we have 
to accommodate classroom space. In many cases, for these children, 
although everyone in Puerto Rico learns English and Spanish, their 
primary language is Spanish, so we have to get instructors who are able 
to bring them to proficiency in English. That is a challenge. All of 
that is falling on the State of Florida as well. While Florida welcomes 
our fellow Americans from Puerto Rico who are seeking refuge, the costs 
need to be accounted for.
  We had hospitals that were damaged from the storms, and the repairs 
to some of these continue to rise. In some cases, these hospital 
repairs resulted in the closure of the hospital for more than a year.
  There is a hospital in the Keys that is going to be completely 
rebuilt. If you have ever been to the Florida Keys, the distances are 
bad, and there is a hospital that is going to have to be completely 
rebuilt.
  In addition to all of that, we have our healthcare providers in 
Florida who provided charitable care, not just to Floridians after the 
storm but to displaced Americans from Puerto Rico and from the U.S. 
Virgin Islands. They need to be reimbursed for doing that. They didn't 
sit back and say: We are not going to do it unless you send us a check. 
They did it, and there were real expenses. Then they were also hit by 
the storm, and they are dealing with those new expenses.
  By the way, one of the things I hope we will do is expedite hiring 
authority for medical personnel in HHS because, for years, we have 
failed to maintain adequate levels of personnel willing to give a 
couple of weeks of their time to aid in a time of disaster. Our medical 
teams are depleted, and at this rate we will already have a staffing 
shortage by the next hurricane season, which is just a few months away.
  NOAA, another Federal agency--the disaster bill needs to fund the 
continued removal of the things I have already discussed: marine 
debris, lost lobster traps, capsized vessels. There is an environmental 
component to it, and there is an economic component to it. If our canal 
is full of refrigerators, debris, things that need to be removed, the 
water cannot be navigated. The value of all that property is wiped out, 
and also what is wiped out is the desire of people to come and visit. 
Beyond increasing--or as we call it around here ``plussing up''--
critical FEMA accounts like the Disaster Relief Fund, we should also 
include language in the bill to protect counties, cities, towns, and 
individual homeowners who received FEMA disaster assistance from the 
uncertainty about when the Federal Government may come back in a few 
years and claw back that support. In essence, they can come back in a 
few years and say: We gave you too much money; give it back to us.
  If someone did something wrong, I am not talking about that. I am 
talking about a good faith estimate that both sides agreed on, and they 
delivered the money, and then 4 years later they show up and say: Hey, 
we have looked at it again, and in hindsight we gave you $1,000 more in 
the case of an individual or $50,000 or $100,000 more in the case of a 
city or a county, and now they have to scramble to pay this back.
  So I will continue to work to make sure that FEMA has the resources 
it needs to assist for recovery victims for

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both short-term and long-term recovery but without this threat of 
clawback, and there are ways to do that which will allow us to be 
fiscally responsible.
  I have already talked about the housing issue in Monroe County in 
Southwest Florida. Monroe County is in the Florida Keys, and that is 
why it is critical that FEMA has the resources to utilize programs such 
as direct relief assistance, which will enable the Federal Government 
to lease a property that would not generally be available to the 
public, such as corporate lodging, to house survivors, to house people, 
as opposed to just giving them a voucher and saying: Go find a hotel.
  Here is what happens. They get a hotel in South Dade in Homestead, 
and the big rates come in February, and everyone gets kicked out in 
February because those rooms were booked a year ago at those rates, and 
they have nowhere to go. It is disruptive. If we were able to lease out 
an entire long-term corporate housing or lodging facility, these people 
would have some certainty to go about their lives while their homes and 
their lives are rebuilt. Programs such as Direct Lease assistance 
provide the type of flexibility that Florida and, quite frankly, the 
whole country needs. We are going to continue to advocate for the 
program so we can provide roofs over the heads of displaced Floridians 
and Puerto Ricans.

  Infrastructure damage throughout Florida is also substantial. In 
particular, I was able to go down to the Everglades to Flamingo. It is 
a place we have gone often. It is one of the places we leave from to go 
fishing with my children. The facilities there were already in bad 
shape, to be frank. It looked like something out of one of those 1960s 
black-and-white movies they show in schools.
  This place was badly hurt. Again, this is Federal property. That is a 
national park that belongs to the American people, under the custody of 
the Federal Government, and it was wiped out and hurt and destroyed. We 
need to help rebuild it. By the way, that includes airports, NASA--the 
Kennedy Space Center--which also suffered damages.
  I have a couple more points, then I will close.
  Housing and Urban Development. On December 14, I introduced the 
Disaster Assistance Simplification Act. That prohibits HUD from 
penalizing victims of natural disasters who apply but then turn down an 
SBA disaster loan. So if you apply for an SBA disaster loan, HUD will 
come back and take away your assistance or render you ineligible for 
HUD assistance not because you received the HUD loan but because you 
applied for it. That should be taken out.
  I have worked with colleagues to ensure that this language is 
included in the upcoming supplemental because I don't understand how we 
can allow unsynchronized and burdensome disaster assistance programs to 
make recovery more difficult for someone impacted by a storm. You just 
went through a storm. Your business was destroyed. Your home was 
destroyed. Your family had to move to another county or another city. 
On top of that, you have to agonize over what the Federal Government 
may or may not give you. If they gave it to you, you have to agonize 
over when they may come back and take it away. We can't further 
victimize victims by penalizing victims who do not take assistance. Our 
laws are discouraging people from applying for SBA disaster loans.
  Again, on that particular point, I am not talking about people who 
are double-dipping. I am talking about people who applied for HUD and 
SBA. Just the act of applying for that loan means you can't get the HUD 
assistance. That is ridiculous.
  I will close with Puerto Rico. It doesn't get enough attention, in my 
mind. We read about the situation every day. Now the articles are 
saying: Can you believe they still don't have electricity in Puerto 
Rico? There are a lot of problems that need to be addressed. Puerto 
Rico had a lot of problems before the storm.
  At end of the day, here is the bottom line. Puerto Rico is a U.S. 
territory. It is the responsibility of the United States. These are 
American citizens. They are children. They are residents. They wear the 
uniform of this country. If you go to Arlington Cemetery, not far from 
here, you will see their names after paying the ultimate sacrifice. 
They contribute to every area of our lives, whether they choose to live 
on the mainland or on the island. Perhaps because it isn't always in 
the headlines, a lot of people just don't understand its status, its 
importance, and our relationship and obligations.
  We have been involved from the very beginning, not just because of 
the impact it has had on Florida but because, on a personal level, I 
have so many friends and people I care about who live there. If you 
live in Florida, you know people who have people they love who live 
there.
  Right after the storm, I sent three members of my staff, who spent 
over a week at their emergency operations center, just trying to act as 
a conduit to facilitate between Federal efforts and the efforts of 
Puerto Rico's government, but the work that remains is extraordinary.
  I talk about the people who are still displaced. We have seen the 
story of people losing their housing vouchers who were staying in a 
hotel. People say: We just heard from the government in Puerto Rico 
that your home is habitable so you are done. Check out tomorrow 
afternoon. They have nowhere to go. If they have family, maybe, but if 
they don't, where do they go that night? It is a problem. We have seen 
that happen in Connecticut and fear it could happen in other places.
  On the disaster relief, we think recovering is not just about putting 
up light posts. We think it is about helping the economy grow, about 
attracting business and investment back, and about helping people who 
want to stay to be able to stay.
  We have a number of provisions we hope will be included. One is a 
temporary payroll tax deduction so whatever it is you get paid, you get 
to keep more of it. It would be temporary for a year, but at least it 
is a way of giving people a raise without being a burden on businesses.
  We would also like to see a temporary expansion of the child tax 
credit. Because of a quirk in the law, people who file taxes from 
Puerto Rico are not eligible for it at its full value the way someone 
on the mainland would be. Again, all they have to do is move to 
Florida, and they can do it.
  These are U.S. citizens. If they can fight in our Armed Forces, if 
they pledge allegiance to our flag, if they are citizens of our Nation, 
why should they not be entitled to the same tax versions there that 
they would be if they were living on the mainland?
  We also need to deal with, as Senator Nelson talked about, the 
Medicaid cliff. Because of the healthcare law that passed a number of 
years ago, the funding mechanism that was created places them in a 
position where soon they will run out of money in their Medicaid 
Program. Ultimately, what will happen is, people who need these 
services will move to Florida or some other State, and then they will 
sign up for Medicaid in the States and get what they couldn't get in 
Puerto Rico. It will actually cost more. If money is what you are 
worried about, it will cost more in the long run not to do it than to 
do it.

  I also think we need to increase funding for energy grid technical 
assistance from the Department of Energy. On that note, I would say, we 
are getting reports that they are being forced to rebuild using the 
exact same equipment that was there before the storm. Some of this 
equipment is so old, it isn't even manufactured anymore. They don't 
make it anymore. They had to retrofit and make things up.
  If we are going to rebuild or help rebuild the grid in Puerto Rico, 
shouldn't they be able to put in something that is modern as opposed to 
rebuilding the old stuff? That makes no sense. It will actually make 
the system more resilient.
  A lot of these proposals may meet with resistance, but they all make 
sense. We can justify every single one of them. I hope we will pursue 
them. I worked very closely with Resident Commissioner Jenniffer 
Gonzalez on these efforts. I am grateful for her strong advocacy and 
the support of so many of my colleagues on behalf of our fellow 
Americans in Puerto Rico.
  I close by asking our colleagues this. I know we have the policy work 
this week. The Democrats and Republicans

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are doing their thing. I know we have funding issues a week from this 
Friday that we have to address. I know immigration is an important 
issue that we need to confront, but do not forget about disaster 
relief. We have to get it done for the people out west in California, 
the people in Texas, the people of Florida, the people of Puerto Rico, 
and for our fellow Americans who were hurt by the hurricanes this 
season and the fires of 2017.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.