[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 19457]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1545
         RISING TO THE OCCASION AS AMERICANS TO HELP AMERICANS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Watson) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WATSON. Mr. Speaker, yes, New Orleans is worth saving and 
rebuilding. It is one of the most American cities, for it represents 
how diversity comes together in harmony and blends into our music, our 
foods, our culture, and our Americanism.
  Response to this disaster was a miserable failure. Americans died, 
Americans went hungry, Americans were living for days without water and 
without health services. You can live without food for 7 days, but you 
cannot live without water. Our health services were dysfunctional. We 
must admit, we failed at protecting our American citizens in our own 
homeland.
  We as Congress must rise to the occasion. We have American citizens 
suffering and cannot get immediate help to them. Medics always take our 
wounded off the battlefields. Our social contract says trust us and we 
will deliver in your time of need. This is America's Gulf War.
  One-half million people have been uprooted. Millions of people in 
Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana, 
have been affected. 150,000 of the displaced live below the poverty 
line, and 50,000 of them are post-retirement age.
  So what are we doing about it? What am I doing about it? I have 
called my State government, I have called my board of education, I have 
called my local representatives to ask them to do a displacement 
absorption plan; invite them to California, invite them to Los Angeles. 
Share your housing with a family. Share your schools, your colleges and 
your universities with those post-secondary students. Both public and 
private colleges must kick in.
  We have started the New Orleans Hurricane Relief Fund. I am 
collecting money, along with several other organizations in the L.A. 
area and with one of our major radio stations, and we are having that 
money hand-carried into these disaster areas to the leadership that has 
been chosen to be responsible.
  Mr. Speaker, there are so many things that we can do and we must do, 
and we must do them now. I do not want to watch television another 
evening and see people begging for food and water, begging for 
medicine, begging to be taken out of areas that are soaked with water 
that will be causing diseases, with an environment that is polluted 
from the smoke coming up from the buildings that are on fire.
  Where are we when the world is watching? I am embarrassed for the 
U.N. to say we are going to help you, but I am overjoyed that other 
nations are addressing our needs when we are in need, as we have 
addressed theirs when they are in need.
  So let us rise to the occasion. Let us save Americans. They are not 
refugees; they are citizens of the United States.

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