[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 184 (Wednesday, December 11, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Page S6947]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



          Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery

  Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, we are running out of time. We have just 
over a week left before Congress goes home for the holidays, and we 
cannot leave town without passing long-term disaster relief.
  People have waited and waited and waited and waited for help to 
arrive, and every day that we don't get this done is another day that 
survivors can't start to get back to life as they knew it--going to 
work, going to school, dropping their kids off at basketball practice, 
getting together with friends and neighbors.
  For the people in Lahaina, help cannot come soon enough. Almost a 
year and a half after the tragic fires, it is as hard as ever to make 
ends meet. Housing is scarce. Prices are going up. Jobs are hard to 
come by. People are doing everything they can to get by and to help 
each other out. So it is not for a lack of trying; it is that they were 
never meant to confront this recovery alone.
  When you have lost everything, when you are still mourning friends 
and loved ones, when you are 16 months into a recovery and normalcy 
still feels so far away, you need help, and getting that help is the 
difference between people being able to stay on Maui or leaving. People 
are leaving the only place they have ever called home. Those are the 
stakes. They are not theoretical. This is happening to hundreds of 
families in West Maui.
  Lahaina is not the only community that has been devastated by a 
disaster. Communities in 40 States are building back from a disaster of 
some kind--a flood, a wildfire, a hurricane--and more than 25 States 
are relying on long-term Federal assistance to get survivors back on 
their feet. No one is asking for charity. What they are asking for is 
the kind of aid that has helped to restore so many communities across 
the country over many, many years. This is what Congress is supposed to 
do--Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, New York and New Jersey after 
Hurricane Sandy, Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, California after 
the 2018 wildfires, and more than a dozen States nationally as recently 
as 3 years ago.
  The Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery Program--
known as CDBG-DR--works. It has supported millions of Americans struck 
by disaster over the last 30 years by giving them flexible, long-term 
assistance. So to fail to do this now for people in Lahaina and across 
the country would be quite unusual and shameful.
  We have a simple task here: to help our fellow Americans in their 
hour of need. I want to be perfectly clear. We cannot and we will not 
leave town without passing disaster aid.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Rosen). The Senator from Indiana.