[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
[[Page S561]]
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
[[Page S562]]
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
[[Page S563]]
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
[[Page S564]]
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.