[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 18513-18516]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               HURRICANES

  Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I rise to speak this morning about a 
very important issue for the country, particularly for the gulf coast 
region and the State of Louisiana.
  Madam President, as you know, although your State of Alaska is not 
located in the southern part of the Nation, you and other members of 
society are well aware of the devastation that occurred to our coastal 
communities, whether on the eastern coast or southeastern coast or the 
central gulf.
  As is the case this morning, Hurricane Ivan, a category 4 hurricane 
bearing down on the gulf coast region, according to the latest weather 
reports and indications based on good research that is being done here 
by many of our Federal agencies, we can somewhat predict the path of 
the hurricane. With our most sophisticated systems, radar and weather 
tracking, pinpointing with some accuracy, there is a projection of 
where this killer storm, this major storm, may hit. It seems as though 
it has turned north and is headed right now to the Mississippi-Alabama 
line, but it could move within the next 12 hours to the east or to the 
west.
  As we wrap up our business here in Washington, the entire gulf coast, 
and the State I represent, Louisiana being one of those Gulf Coast 
States, Mississippi and Alabama and the panhandle of Florida, is under 
a mandatory evacuation. Why? It is because this is a huge storm. It is 
a category 4. We hope and pray, and there are some indications, that it 
will change to a category 3. But it is a major storm with high winds of 
165 miles per hour.
  It is not the first time a storm of this size or intensity has hit 
the gulf coast. We know by reading history. Several decades ago, some 
of us actually lived through extremely powerful and killer storms like 
Camille or Betsy in Louisiana and other States throughout the gulf 
coast that proved to be very dangerous, with loss of life and billions 
of dollars in property loss.
  We don't have to be reminded that Florida has just been hit in the 
last 3 weeks twice already. This one will be of historic devastation in 
Florida, having had three hurricanes hit in such a short period of 
time.
  I want to speak this morning about what we can do here in Washington 
a little better, with a little more energy, with a little more focus to 
help the people in Louisiana and throughout the gulf coast area. Not 
only do they deserve our help, but because of the energy industry and 
the economic benefits they bring to the whole country, they not only 
need our help, they deserve our help. They deserve our attention.
  As I have stated, the hurricane is to make landfall sometime in early 
Thursday morning, sometime between 1 a.m. and 6 or 7 a.m.
  The people of Louisiana know the devastation this kind of storm can 
bring. Let me show a picture because I think a picture is worth a 
thousand words. While this looks terrible and horrible--and it is very 
frightening, as you can see a woman, standing water rising over her 
waist, trying to get to safety--this is not a hurricane. This is only a 
tropical storm. This was Tropical Storm Isidore that hit the gulf coast 
in 2002. This wasn't a category 1 hurricane. We are talking about 
severe devastation when a category 3 or category 4 or category 5 
hurricane pushes that water out of the gulf, out of Lake Ponchartrain 
into the tremendously populated areas around the gulf coast.
  This is what people have been fleeing from for the last 36 hours. 
When I say fleeing, I mean all of the interstates going north out of 
Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, and interstates going west, as 
people try to leave the east and head for safety toward Houston. They 
have been, at times, in bumper-to-bumper traffic for hours. People can 
walk faster than the rate the cars are moving. Luckily, the Governors 
of these States are very skilled and able, the local elected officials 
have been through this many times and were quick to see the danger, 
even though the path could not be predicted, and were quick to call for 
evacuations days ago. This morning, we received reports that the 
highways are clearing in some parts along the Gulf of Mexico.

[[Page 18514]]

Some families spent yesterday 12, 13, 14 hours in automobiles, going 
less than 5 miles per hour as they tried to find safety and shelter all 
along the gulf coast to flee a storm of this magnitude.
  Again, this is not a picture of a hurricane. This is a tropical 
storm. That is why people are fleeing in the gulf area.
  I will speak for a moment about energy and about what the gulf coast 
contributes to the energy independence and energy security of this 
Nation. As millions of people have been leaving their homes to flee to 
higher ground, 442 rigs or platforms have been deserted by companies in 
the Gulf of Mexico. When I say deserted, not just, of course, left to 
wreak havoc, but they have been tied down, secured, supported. All 
nonessential emergency personnel have had to move out of the Gulf of 
Mexico. This evacuation represents 50 percent of the manned rigs and 
platforms in the gulf.
  Right now, oil and gas from the Gulf of Mexico and coastal Louisiana 
represents 60 percent of the entire Gulf of Mexico production. For the 
time being, that has been shut down because of Ivan. I have discussed 
with Members of this Senate the importance of our LOOP facility. The 
Louisiana Offshore Oil Port sits right out on the Continental Shelf, 
near Port Fourchon Louisiana, and is a superport responsible for the 
entrance of 1 million barrels of oil a day.
  We are in Iraq, in an important battle, but part of our objective 
there is to secure an oil supply for the region and for the Nation and 
to use that for the betterment of the people of Iraq, for their growth 
and development and the security and stability of the world, as well as 
to fight for other issues. We are fighting to get 1 to 3 million 
barrels out of Iraq, and right here in the Gulf of Mexico, today, we 
have a facility that has virtually been shut down because of a 
hurricane. Nearly a million barrels is being imported in this country, 
and exported, a year.
  Port Fourchon is a small port that sits at the very edge of Highway 
1. It is unbelievable to view the picture. This is Highway 1 in 
Tropical Storm Isidore. That was another storm, not a hurricane. This 
damage occurs in a tropical storm. We cannot see the highway because it 
is covered with water. The highway leads down to the gulf. Port 
Fourchon, the LOOP facility, is right off of this shore where 18 
percent of the offshore oil and gas revenues flow into this country 
through this little road called LA 1 that we have been fighting now for 
several years. With the leadership of Senator Murray and Senator Reid 
and others, Senator Jeffords and Members on the Republican side, as 
well, we have been able to get a designation as a special highway, but 
we are still waiting for the big bucks to help with lifting this 
highway and expanding it so we can have a functioning port.
  The hurricane is scheduled to hit Mobile or west of Mobile right now. 
I just spoke to the Port Fourchon Port Director and they expect this 
highway to be underwater by 1 p.m. today--again. This is the major 
route of oil and gas into the United States of America. This is Highway 
1, Port Fourchon, and the LOOP facility, which is the only facility in 
the Nation that imports and exports oil and gas at that rate and at 
that level.
  My point is, I hope we will again use this opportunity to focus on 
the critical infrastructure needs necessary for Louisiana and the gulf 
coast of Mississippi and Alabama primarily to protect itself not just 
from homeland security threats from terrorists but real threats of 
weather.
  People might say: Senator, why did they build the port here in the 
first place? I understand that. If we could do it again, knowing what 
we know now, perhaps that would not have been done. I will speak for a 
minute about that because I want people to understand the argument. Men 
and women are here because the oil and gas is here. If we could figure 
out a way to have people live in Chicago and commute every day down to 
the Gulf of Mexico to get the oil and gas out of the ground, then 
people would not have to live here, but we have not figured that out 
yet. So real life men and women and children and families live here. 
They have to live here to serve as the platform for the oil and gas 
that keeps the lights on all over the country. Yet we ask them time and 
time and time again to literally risk their lives to do so, and we 
cannot find a few million dollars in this budget to lift this highway 
so either they can get out or they can be safe.
  This is a heavy rain. This occurs in a tropical storm in a heavy 
rain. I don't know what will happen with the hurricane. That is why 
people are not panicked but are most certainly concerned. This picture 
shows the main bayou that runs inland. The only way the rigs can get 
out of the gulf, they can either dock along the ports--Morgan City, New 
Iberia, Galveston, and come into Houston for some protection, the only 
way they can get in is through the Mississippi, up inland, through this 
bayou. They cannot get in when this bridge is down. The people cannot 
get out unless the bridge is down. So every time there is a storm, the 
local officials in my State have to say: OK, kids and families, you all 
go over the bridge. And they hold up the rigs. Then they let some of 
the rigs through, and they hold up the families trying to get out.
  This is outrageous. We have money in the budget to build this bridge 
so we can move our infrastructure out of the gulf. And the Presiding 
Officer understands the magnitude of the barges, cranes, and sheer 
weight and size of the equipment I am talking about. It is not a Tonka 
toy. It is not Legos. It is big, heavy equipment that has to be moved 
at great danger to the men and women who have to move it to save 
insurance companies money, to save taxpayers money, to save 
shareholders money for these companies.
  Let me talk about what else is going on. Louisiana wetlands are not a 
beach. I have spent a lot of my life growing up in the gulf area, and I 
have spent a lot of time on the Florida beaches, and I have never seen 
anything more beautiful. We in Louisiana support those beaches. We 
understand the tourism. We are some of the tourists that go there. But 
our coast is not a beach. We do not have a beach unless you want to 
count Grand Isle. It is beautiful and wonderful, but does not look like 
Destin, Florida. It is a lovely small beach. That is about the only 
beach we have. The rest of our coast is not a beach. It is a wetlands. 
It is not the wetlands of Louisiana, it is America's wetlands. It has 
been washing away at an alarming rate. The difference between a major 
hurricane coming out of the gulf in 1940 and a major hurricane coming 
out of the gulf this year in 2004 is we have lost thousands and 
thousands of acres. The size of the State of Rhode Island has been lost 
in the last 50 years, so the buffer has been shrinking that protects 
the city of New Orleans and much of the populated portions of 
Mississippi. That has been lost.
  So the people who live on the gulf coast of Mississippi and the 
southern part of Mississippi and Louisiana are at greater and greater 
risk because those barrier islands that once existed, those acres and 
acres and square miles of wetlands, have been eroded. Why? For two 
reasons. One, we leveed the Mississippi River for commerce, not just to 
benefit Mississippi and Louisiana but to benefit the Midwest, the 
Northeast, the West, to open up trade and opportunity up and down that 
Mississippi River. We had no choice.
  If you want to go to before the trade and go to when the country 
started, we had to anchor the mouth of the Mississippi to literally 
create the Nation--unless we wanted to stop at the Kentucky border or 
the Shenandoah Valley, which was a choice at one time. We could have 
just made the United States go from the east coast to the Shenandoah 
Valley, and we could have had a wonderful nation right there in the 
East. But we decided to go West. We decided to go all the way to the 
Oregon Trail with Lewis and Clark. President Jefferson had a vision, 
but that vision could not possibly happen without anchoring the 
security of the mouth of the Mississippi River. So we did. We had to 
basically try to tame this very wild place, very wet place, very low-
lying place.
  But we did it not just for ourselves; we did it for the whole Nation, 
with the

[[Page 18515]]

Nation's help and support. We did not pay for everything, but we 
contributed a great deal. Today we continue to give billions of dollars 
out of the gulf coast in oil and gas revenues and taxes that go to this 
country. We continue to send our labor and our support and our money to 
this Nation. Yet time and time again, when Louisiana comes to ask, 
Could we please have just a portion of the revenue that we send?--we 
are not asking for charity; we are asking for something we earned; we 
are happy to share with the rest of the country to help invest in 
infrastructure--we are told: We cannot do it this year. We do not have 
enough money. It is not a high enough priority.
  Well, I do not know when it is going to get to be a high enough 
priority. I hate to say maybe it is going to take the loss thousands of 
lives on the gulf coast to make this country wake up and realize in 
what we are under-investing. Again, we lose a football field every 30 
minutes. We have lost more than 1,900 square miles in the past 70 
years, and the U.S. Geological Survey predicts we will lose another 
1,000 square miles if decisive action is not taken now.
  Now, we have made good plans in the last several years to save the 
Everglades. We are well on our way to do that. We have plans underway 
to restore the Chesapeake Basin, which is an extremely important 
ecosystem to this part of the country. We have some preliminary plans 
underway in the Great Lakes. But no area--not the Everglades, not the 
Chesapeake, and not the Great Lakes--of this great Nation contributes 
more economically or energy-wise than the wetlands of America that lay 
to the south along the gulf coast. They do not compare to the energy 
contribution; they do not compare to the fisheries contribution; they 
do not compare to the commerce contribution of this Nation or the port 
contribution when you put it together. Yet we seem to be getting less, 
not more.
  So we have to stop the vanishing wetlands. We have plans in Congress. 
We are going to continue to push, with Lamar Alexander's help, on the 
Energy bill. We have a new bill moving through Congress called the 
Americans Outdoors Act that seeks to dedicate a portion of those 
revenues for coastal States, even States that do not produce oil and 
gas off of their coast. I think we should be willing to share some of 
these coastal revenues for coastal-related issues. Some people 
disagree.
  The people of Louisiana do not mind sharing. It is sort of our 
natural way. We are happy to do that. We do not even want it all. We 
just want our fair share. That is what this bill does.
  We also have a bill through the WRDA legislation, which is the 
traditional funding for the Corps of Engineers, the Federal agency 
primarily responsible to keep the waterways dredged, to keep the levees 
up as high as possible, to work with our local flood control folks, 
particularly our levee boards in Louisiana, which are some of the most 
important public entities we have, that literally keep people dry from 
heavy rains and from floods and storms of this nature.
  But let me also repeat, again for the record, I know every time a 
hurricane hits in North Carolina or South Carolina or Florida, other 
people who are not familiar with hurricanes say: Why do the people live 
along the coast? Why do we let people live along the coast? I think 
that is a legitimate argument that could be made for resort 
communities. It is not mandatory they live there. They choose to live 
there because, of course, the coastlines are very pleasant and 
beautiful places to live. In fact, Americans really agree with that 
because two-thirds of the entire population of the United States live 
within 50 miles of the coast. So that is an issue that could be 
debated, and we could talk about that.
  But Louisiana people who live in Port Fourchon, while they enjoy 
living there, believe me, and while they love to shrimp and they love 
to fish, they are there doing a great service for this Nation, working 
in an energy industry and trying to dig out of the gulf the resources 
this country needs. Where people live along these bayous, they are 
fishing and they are contributing to industries. They do not have a lot 
of fish in downtown New York. They do not have a lot of fish in 
Chicago. The only place you are going to catch fish is in the water. So 
you have to live there basically to catch the fish. They are living 
there for a livelihood.
  In addition, New Orleans itself was settled as the security as this 
Nation grew. Now people want to say, maybe we should--if a big storm 
hits--just move New Orleans. I do not know how you move a major 
metropolitan area. But I also say this about my great city, where I 
grew up and have represented, still to this day--and in many different 
ways throughout my life--the people, the city is 9 feet generally below 
sea level. But we have some of the most sophisticated pumping systems 
in the world.
  In fact, the engineers who built the pumping stations that supply New 
Orleans with flood control were the engineers who helped Holland and 
studied in Venice. We do not have halfway pumping systems. We have the 
best in the world. We have the best engineers, the finest pumping 
systems. We are an old city, and we spend a lot of our money to keep 
those pumping systems up to date. In fact, the Federal Government has 
been a major partner. I am proud to have led the effort. The Southeast 
Louisiana Flood Control program has invested hundreds of millions of 
dollars, Federal and State money, to upgrade those pumping systems. So 
we are not Pollyanna about this. We are not Johnny-come-lately. We have 
great engineers. We are smart. If fact, we have taught the world how to 
drain floodwaters because we have been doing it the longest, for over 
300 years.
  But the city can do just so much, when it has a population that is 
challenged. We are not the wealthiest State. We are not the richest 
State. We need our Federal Government to understand that we are happy 
to share our resources and riches with the world, but we do deserve a 
greater portion of these revenues to keep our people safe, to keep our 
infrastructure intact, and, most certainly, to be respectful of what 
the people of Louisiana and the entire gulf coast contribute to our 
national well-being and security.
  I want to put up another picture. This is another picture of LA 1. 
This is on a day when you see the traffic backed up. Obviously, there 
was something wrong with the Leeville Bridge. But this is what the 
traffic looks like trying to get out before a hurricane: the trucks, 
the cars, the schoolbuses, trying to leave a place where they were 
working on behalf of not only themselves but on behalf of this Nation. 
The least we can do is send a little money to fix this highway and to 
keep people safe and high and dry in these storms.
  Let's pray, Madam President, that Hurricane Ivan does not hit the 
city of New Orleans directly. I am going to submit a front-page article 
from the Washington Post for the Record. It is an article about what 
that might be like. One of our emergency personnel who has been working 
on an emergency plan has stored several thousand body bags in the event 
of a major flood in the city of New Orleans. Let's hope that never 
happens. But I have to say, as a Senator representing the State of 
Louisiana, the chances of it happening sometime are pretty good. If we 
do not improve our transportation evacuation routes, invest in 
protecting this infrastructure, and focusing on reinvesting some of the 
tremendous wealth that has been taken from this area, and reinvesting 
it back, we will only have ourselves to blame.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the article entitled 
``Awaiting Ivan in the Big Uneasy'' be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Sept. 14, 2004]

                    Awaiting Ivan in the Big Uneasy


                   New Orleans Girds for Major Damage

             (By Michael Grunwald and Manuel Roig-Franzia)

       New Orleans, Sept. 14.--Walter Maestri, an emergency 
     manager here in America's most vulnerable metropolitan area, 
     has 10,000 body bags ready in case a major hurricane ever 
     hits New Orleans. As Hurricane

[[Page 18516]]

     Ivan's expected path shifted uncomfortably close to this low-
     lying urban soup bowl Tuesday, Maestri said he might need a 
     lot more.
       If a strong Category 4 storm such as Ivan made a direct 
     hit, he warned, 50,000 people could drown, and this city of 
     Mardi Gras and jazz could cease to exist.
       ``This could be The One,'' Maestri said in an interview in 
     his underground bunker. ``You're talking about the potential 
     loss of a major metropolitan area.''
       Forecasters said Tuesday night that they expected Ivan to 
     veer at least 70 miles east of New Orleans before making 
     landfall early Thursday, somewhere along the Gulf Coast 
     extremities of Louisiana, Alabama or Mississippi. But Ivan 
     has consistently drifted farther west than their predictions. 
     This port city's levees are designed to withstand only a 
     Category 3 storm, and officials begged residents to evacuate 
     the area ``if you have the means.''
       By evening, the city's few escape routes were spectacularly 
     clogged, and authorities acknowledged that hundreds of 
     thousands of residents would not get out in time. The 
     stranded will not be able to turn to the Red Cross, because 
     New Orleans is the only city in which the relief agency 
     refuses to set up emergency storm shelters, to ensure the 
     safety of its own staff. Even if a 30-foot-high wall of water 
     crashes through the French Quarter--Maestri's worst-case 
     scenario--stranded residents will be on their own.
       New Orleans is often described as a disaster waiting to 
     happen--it is mostly below sea level, practically surrounded 
     by water, artificially kept dry by pumps and levees, rapidly 
     losing its natural storm protection. But rarely have its 
     leaders sounded so afraid that the wait could be over soon.
       ``I'm terrified,'' said Windell Curole, director of the 
     South Lafourche Levee District in the swampy bayous south of 
     the city. ``I'm telling you, we've got no elevation. This 
     isn't hyperbole. The only place I can compare us to is 
     Bangladesh.''
       More than 100,000 Bangladeshis died in a 1991 storm, and 
     Curole is genuinely afraid that a similar tragedy could 
     strike New Orleans, most of which sits six to eight feet 
     lower than the surrounding waters of the Mississippi River, 
     Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico. Ivan is the 
     strongest storm to threaten the region since Hurricane Betsy 
     nailed New Orleans in 1965. It brought more than $7 billion 
     in havoc at a time when southern Louisiana was less populated 
     and less exposed.
       The doomsayers are quick to add a caveat: Ivan might not 
     turn out to be The One. The National Hurricane Center expects 
     the storm to swerve toward the area between Gulfport, Miss., 
     and Mobile, Ala. Officials in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi 
     and the Florida Panhandle were urging residents Tuesday to 
     leave coastal areas. ``I beg people on the coast: Do not ride 
     this storm out,'' Mississippi's Gov. Haley Barbour (R) said.
       A dozen coastal casinos were shuttered in Mississippi, and 
     Barbour's evacuation order for coastal areas was mandatory. 
     In Alabama, Gov. Bob Riley (R) ordered evacuations from Gulf 
     Shores, Orange Beach and Fort Morgan, and some towns 
     postponed runoff elections scheduled for Tuesday. Evacuation 
     was mandatory in parts of Escambia, Bay and Walton counties 
     in Florida, and most schools in the Panhandle were closed.
       Most scientists, engineers and emergency managers agree 
     that if Ivan does spare southern Louisiana this time, The One 
     is destined to arrive some day. The director of the U.S. 
     Geological Survey has warned that New Orleans is on a path to 
     extinction. Gregory W. Stone, director of the Coastal Studies 
     Institute at Louisiana State University, frets that near 
     misses such as Hurricane Georges--a Category 2 storm that 
     swerved away from New Orleans a day before landfall in 1998--
     only give residents a false sense of security. The Red Cross 
     has rated a hurricane inundating New Orleans as America's 
     deadliest potential natural disaster--worse than a California 
     earthquake.
       ``I don't mean to be an alarmist, but the doomsday scenario 
     is going to happen eventually,'' Stone said. ``I'll stake my 
     professional reputation on it.''
       The main problem with southern Louisiana is that it is 
     dangerously low, and getting lower. The levees that 
     imprisoned the Mississippi River into its shipping channel 
     and helped make New Orleans one of the world's busiest ports 
     have also prevented the muddy river from spreading sediment 
     around its delta.
       As a result, southern Louisiana is sinking into the Gulf, 
     losing about 25 square miles of coastal marshes and barrier 
     islands every year. Those marshes and islands used to help 
     slow storms as they approached New Orleans; computer 
     simulations now predict that the loss of these natural storm 
     barriers will increase storm surges and waves by several 
     feet.
       On a seaplane tour of the region Tuesday, Gerald M. 
     Duszynsi, assistant secretary of the Louisiana Department of 
     Natural Resources, pointed out an area near the tiny bayou 
     town of Leesville, where he fished for redfish and flounder 
     25 years ago. Once a solid patch of green tidal marsh, it is 
     now mostly open water, with a few strips and splotches of 
     green.
       ``This used to be perfect, and now look at it,'' Duszynski 
     said. ``The buffer is gone. Now even the little storms give a 
     big influx.''
       Louisiana's politicians, environmentalists and business 
     leaders have been pushing for a $14 billion coastal 
     restoration project to try to bring back those lost marshes 
     and islands--in order to help protect New Orleans as well as 
     an oil and gas industry that handles nearly a third of the 
     nation's supply.
       The Bush administration forced the state to scale down its 
     request to $1.2 billion last year, and a Senate committee 
     authorized $375 million. But Mark Davis, executive director 
     of the coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, believes that 
     even if Ivan bypasses the region, its scary approach could 
     help galvanize support for a more comprehensive fix.
       ``We're running out of tomorrows,'' Davis said. ``God 
     willing, if there's still a southern Louisiana next week, I'm 
     not talking about the politics of the possible anymore. It's 
     now a question of which side are you on: Do you support the 
     obliteration of a region, or do you want to try to save it?``
       On Tuesday, though, most local officials were thinking more 
     about the potential danger than the potential opportunity. If 
     Ivan does pound New Orleans tidal surges could leave the city 
     underwater for months, since its pumps can remove only about 
     an inch every hour, creating a ``toxic soup'' of chemicals, 
     rodents, poisons and snakes.
       The local officials said they could not order a mandatory 
     evacuation in a city as poor as New Orleans in which more 
     than 100,000 residents have no cars, but they urged people to 
     find some way to escape. ``If you want to take a chance buy a 
     lottery ticket,'' said Jefferson Parish President Aaron 
     Broussard. ``Don't take a chance on this hurricane.''
       New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin seemed flustered as he 
     pleaded with his constituents to flee, at one point 
     suggesting that they take shelter in area hospitals. Visitors 
     were also urged to find somewhere else to go--including 
     10,000 conventioneers in town for the annual meeting of the 
     National Safety Council
       ``This is not a drill,'' Nagin said. ``This is the real 
     deal.''
       But the logistics of exit are quite formidable in the Big 
     Easy. In 1998, as more than 300,000 people fled Hurricane 
     Georges, Interstate 10 turned into a parking lot. Similar 
     miles-long snarls unfolded Tuesday. Flights were canceled and 
     the airport prepared to close. The town that gave the world 
     ``A Streetcar Named Desire'' idled its streetcars.
       The underlying problem, Maestri said, is that the city 
     never should have been built in the first place. It is a 
     teriffic location for business but a lousy location for 
     safety.
       ``The Chamber of Commerce gets really mad at me when I say 
     this, but does New Orleans get rebuilt?'' Maestri asked. The 
     answer, he said could very well be no.

  I thank the Chair for the time and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________