[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19569-19572]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            CONCERNS REGARDING RESPONSE TO HURRICANE KATRINA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, we here in the Congress have just returned 
to conduct the Nation's business, and our hearts are with the families 
and individuals who have lost loved ones and are scattered across this 
country as a result of the terrible, terrible devastation of Hurricane 
Katrina.
  The House of Representatives this evening met with the President's 
Cabinet for nearly 3 hours, and this evening I would like to address 
concerns regarding how the institutions of this Nation failed the 
American people and what can be done about it as we try to heal as a 
Nation and thank those who are extending their compassion and 
assistance and to try to give strength to those who have suffered so 
much. There is not a single American who does not feel just horrible 
about what has happened, and we in the Congress bear responsibility, as 
does this administration, for the response and its shortcomings.
  There is a story today in the Wall Street Journal entitled: ``Behind 
Poor Katrina Response, a Long Chain of Weak Links.'' I would like to 
enter that into the Record and read from a key section of that article 
that talks about what went wrong.

                              {time}  2245

  Number one, the absorption of the Federal Emergency Management Agency 
into the gargantuan and terrorism-focused Department of Homeland 
Security, which I voted against as a Member of this Congress over 2 
years ago; I served on the Committee on Appropriations where FEMA came 
before us. We had an agency that finally worked after 10 years of 
reform in the Clinton administration, and James Lee Witt, the director 
of that agency, did such a terrific job. All of that changed as FEMA 
was subsumed under this gargantuan Department of Homeland Security, 
which in essence had a very different kind of mission.
  Just 2 weeks ago, as the Wall Street Journal article recounts, five 
State emergency managers brought a tough message here to Washington, 
this was before Katrina, and met with Michael Chertoff, the Homeland 
Security Secretary. And these emergency directors told them straight 
out that the administration was weakening emergency management with 
potentially dangerous consequences. In fact, Dave Liebersback, the 
Director of Alaska's Division of Homeland Security and Emergency 
Management, said that the Department's focus on terrorism was 
undermining its readiness here at home.
  The article goes on to say that there were not firm procedures in 
place, for example, for directing people and materials when a national 
emergency such as Katrina would strike. And this article, along with 
other information that I choose to enter into the record this evening, 
shows that the appropriations for the funding of FEMA, as part of this 
major new department, were actually cut by over $600 million in the 
area of regional operations. These are bad decisions that need to be 
reversed. The American people and we here in this Congress must do 
this.
  A few years ago, when the Department of Homeland Security was being 
debated here in the Congress, I stated, and reread for the record 
tonight, ``I do not want FEMA put in the Department of Homeland 
Security. Why? Because FEMA worked. It took us 10 years to fix FEMA 
back during the decades of the 1990s, so why do we want to stick FEMA 
into this big new department that will have 170,000 people in it, and 
we cannot even get direct communications up to the top? The United 
States fought World War II, and we did not need a Department of 
Homeland Security. We defeated the Communists during the Cold War, and 
we didn't need a 170,000-person Department of Homeland Security. We 
fought the Persian Gulf War, and we did not need it.''

[[Page 19570]]

  But our words were not successful here in the Congress. And we ended 
up with a majority of Members of Congress passing a Department of 
Homeland Security that buried FEMA far underneath this mammoth 
administrative structure. I hate to call it a management structure 
because it became a mismanagement structure. And then funding for local 
responses was cut by over $600 million.
  Interestingly, the Web site of the current Committee on Homeland 
Security here in the U.S. House of Representatives indicates a vacancy 
in the chairmanship, with the movement of Mr. Cox of California to the 
Securities and Exchange Commission. So even one of the key committees 
here in the House lacks the key chair as we move into this difficult 
period.
  But the point is that there has been very bad decision making here in 
the Congress that relegated FEMA in terms of domestic affairs, and 
also, those put in charge over the last 5 years have had absolutely no 
hands-on experience with emergency management.
  Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned previously, the articles I referred to 
earlier are submitted hereafter for inclusion in the Record.

                            What Went Wrong?

       Some reasons why the U.S. didn't adequately protect and 
     rescue its citizens from a natural disaster.
       The absorption of the Federal Emergency Management Agency 
     into the gargantuan--and terrorism-focused--Department of 
     Homeland Security.
       A military stretched by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which 
     made commanders reluctant to commit some active-duty units 
     nearby.
       A total breakdown of communications systems.
       Missteps at the local level, including a rudimentary plan 
     to deal with hurricanes.
       A failure to plan for the possibility that New Orleans's 
     levee system would fail.
                                  ____


             [From the Wall Street Journal, Sept. 6, 2005]

   Power Failure: Behind Poor Katrina Response, a Long Chain of Weak 
Links--Changing Structure of FEMA, Emphasis on Terrorism Contributed to 
                  Problems--a Shortage of Helicopters

   (By Robert Block, Amy Schatz, Gary Fields and Christopher Cooper)

       Just two weeks ago, five state emergency managers brought a 
     tough message to a meeting in Washington with Homeland 
     Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and his top deputies.
       ``We told them straight out that they were weakening 
     emergency management with potentially disastrous 
     consequences,'' says Dave Liebersbach, the director of 
     Alaska's Division of Homeland Security and Emergency 
     Management. The department's focus on terrorism was 
     undermining its readiness for other catastrophes, said the 
     visiting officials, who included emergency managers from 
     Mississippi and Alabama.
       Now that Hurricane Katrina has left the Gulf Coast flooded 
     and New Orleans in ruins, the question ricocheting around the 
     nation and the world is this: How could the world's biggest 
     superpower fail so badly in protecting and rescuing its 
     residents from a natural disaster so frequently foretold?
       The answer is sure to receive intense scrutiny this fall in 
     Congress and around the nation, especially given revived 
     fears that the U.S. is ill-prepared for a terrorist attack. 
     ``We are going to take a hard, hard look at our disaster-
     response procedures,'' said Republican Majority Leader Bill 
     Frist of Tennessee this weekend as he assisted patients at 
     the New Orleans airport.
       Yesterday, the government moved aggressively to show it has 
     the situation in hand. President Bush paid his second visit 
     to the region in four days, visiting Baton Rouge, La., and 
     Poplarville, Miss. He asserted that federal, state and local 
     governments are ``doing the best we can.'' The major levee 
     breach in New Orleans, at the 17th Street Canal, was closed, 
     allowing the city to begin pumping out floodwaters, a process 
     expected to take about 30 days.
       Meanwhile, thousands of federal troops appeared to be 
     firmly in control of the city, with most residents evacuated 
     and searches for survivors well underway. A Customs and 
     Border Protection aircraft operating as a flying 
     communication link gave first responders in New Orleans the 
     ability to communicate for the first time since Katrina 
     struck more than a week ago. In suburban Jefferson Parish, 
     thousands of residents were allowed to check their homes 
     under tight restrictions to evaluate what was left.
       But the weekend's progress hasn't erased the troubling 
     questions left by the government's delayed understanding of 
     the scope of the damage last week and its initial slowness in 
     mounting rescues and bringing food and water to stricken 
     citizens. The problems include:
       The decision to transform the Federal Emergency Management 
     Agency from a cabinet-level agency reporting directly to the 
     president to just one piece of a new, gargantuan Department 
     of Homeland Security, which altered FEMA's mission and 
     watered down its powers.
       Too few helicopters stationed in the Gulf Coast area ahead 
     of the storm.
       A military stretched by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which 
     left commanders near New Orleans reluctant to commit some 
     active-duty units at nearby Fort Polk, La., because they were 
     in the midst of preparing for an Afghan deployment this 
     winter.
       A total breakdown of communications systems, an echo of the 
     problems that faced New York officials dealing with the 2001 
     terrorist attacks and a system the government has been trying 
     to fix for four years.
       Poor coordination among federal, state and local officials 
     in the days immediately before and after the hurricane.
       Failure at all levels of government to take seriously many 
     studies and reports over many years warning of the potential 
     disaster.
       Indeed, despite many warnings of the dangers, Mr. Chertoff 
     and other administration officials have explained their poor 
     initial response by saying government planners didn't expect 
     both a serious hurricane and a breach in levees. ``This is 
     really one which I think was breathtaking in its surprise,'' 
     Mr. Chertoff told reporters on Saturday.
       Planners, he said, ``were confronted with a second wave 
     that they did not have built into the plan, but using the 
     tools they had, we have to move forward and adapt.''
       Plenty of missteps at the local level contributed to last 
     week's disaster too, from a failure to take basic steps to 
     protect the telecom infrastructure to inadequate food and 
     water at the Superdome. New Orleans may be able to stage 
     events such as Mardi Gras and Jazzfest and provide parking, 
     crowd control and adequate toilets for millions of visitors, 
     but its hurricane plan was more rudimentary. ``Get people to 
     higher ground and have the feds and the state airlift 
     supplies to them--that was the plan, man,'' Mayor Ray Nagin 
     said in an interview yesterday.
       But so far, the federal government is bearing the brunt of 
     criticism, given its vast resources and unique role in 
     responding to major disasters. Critics say the response shows 
     that the nation's disaster-response system, rebuilt in the 
     wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks, is woefully inadequate. 
     In a Washington Post-ABC News poll taken on Friday, the 
     public said by a 67% to 31% margin that the federal 
     government wasn't adequately prepared for Katrina.
       ``What the events of the last week have shown is that over 
     the last few years since 9/11 we have slowly disassembled our 
     national emergency response system and put in its place 
     something far inferior,'' says Bill Waugh, an academic expert 
     on emergency management at Georgia State University. ``We 
     reinvented the wheel when we didn't need to and now have 
     something that doesn't roll very well at all.''
       Many of last week's problems are rooted in January 2003, 
     when the Bush administration, urged on by some members of 
     Congress, created the Homeland Security Department. It 
     amalgamated 22 agencies, from the Coast Guard to the Secret 
     Service, creating the largest government bureaucracy since 
     the Pentagon was formed in 1947.
       From the start, emergency experts and even the Government 
     Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, 
     warned that a special effort was needed to be sure FEMA's 
     traditional mission of providing disaster relief wasn't lost 
     in the shuffle.
       But it was. FEMA's clout had long depended on its ability 
     to help states plan for natural disasters by providing 
     emergency preparedness grants and other resources. Under 
     Homeland Security, grant-making decisions were transferred to 
     a new, department-wide office in an attempt to consolidate 
     funding. As a result, FEMA lost control of more than $800 
     million in preparedeness grants since 2003, congressional 
     figures show. State emergency managers and congressional 
     investigators say the overwhelming focus for grants is now on 
     fighting terrorism. More money goes to local police and fire 
     departments for that mission than responding to and recover 
     from disasters.
       Officials from Shelby County, Ala., for instance, last year 
     said they could get federal money for chemical suits. But 
     they were unable to get money for an emergency operations 
     center that could link computers, phones and televisions to 
     respond to tornadoes. Between 1957 and 2003, the county had 
     20 tornadoes that it said killed 11 people and caused more 
     than $32 million in damages.
       Meanwhile, morale at FEMA has dropped since it was subsumed 
     by Homeland Security. Several key jobs are unfilled and its 
     executives are overtaxed. Its acting chief operating officer 
     in Washington, for instance, is also the director of FEMA's 
     Atlanta region; his seat there is being held by another 
     acting director. That area includes much of the hurricane-
     prone Southeast.
       In July, Mr. Chertoff unveiled a departmental restructuring 
     that would cement FEMA's reduced role. Among other moves, the 
     plan restricted FEMA's purview to disaster response, 
     stripping away longstanding

[[Page 19571]]

     functions such as helping communities build houses outside 
     flood zones.
       The plan, he told Congress, was ``to take out of FEMA a 
     couple of elements that were really not related to its core 
     missions, that were generally focused on the issue of 
     preparedness in a way that I think was frankly more of a 
     distraction to FEMA than an enhancement to FEMA.''
       On July 27, Alaska's Mr. Liebersbach, in his role as the 
     head of the National Emergency Management Association, an 
     association of state emergency management directors, warned 
     in a letter to Congress that Mr. Chertoff's plan was nothing 
     short of disastrous. It would have ``an extremely negative 
     impact on the people of this nation,'' he wrote.
       ``The proposed reorganization increases the separation 
     between preparedness, response and recovery functions,'' the 
     letter said. ``Any unnecessary separation of these functions 
     will result in disjointed response and adversely impact the 
     effectiveness of departmental operations.'' It was the letter 
     that prompted the meetings with Homeland Security officials 
     in late August.
       Last week's response certainly revealed cracks in the 
     current system. Though President Bush declared a state of 
     emergency before Katrina made landfall on Monday, officials 
     appear to have underestimated the severity of the damage 
     caused by the storm. By Tuesday it became clear that the 
     response was not meeting needs and that FEMA and Louisiana 
     emergency teams were overwhelmed. Then the flood waters hit 
     in New Orleans. It still took several more hours for Mr. 
     Chertoff to declare the disaster an ``incident of national 
     significance.''
       Even then, some requirements hampered speed. Because of 
     worries that terrorists could take advantage of such chaos, 
     FEMA now must abide by post-9/11 security procedures, such as 
     putting air marshals on flights. That meant stranded 
     residents couldn't be evacuated from the New Orleans airport 
     until FEMA had rounded up dozens of Transportation Security 
     Administration screeners and more than 50 federal air 
     marshals. Inadequate power prevented officials from firing up 
     X-ray machines and metal detectors until the government 
     decided evacuees could be searched manually.
       In the hours before and after Katrina struck, there weren't 
     firm procedures in place for directing people and materials. 
     Dan Wessel, owner of Cool Express Inc., a Blue River, Wis., 
     transportation company that contracts with FEMA to move 
     supplies, said he didn't get a green light to send trucks to 
     a staging area in Dallas until about 4 p.m. Monday, hours 
     after Katrina made landfall. That was too late to meet a 
     deadline of getting trucks to Dallas by noon Tuesday, he 
     said.
       Once the trucks arrived, drivers often found no National 
     Guard troops, FEMA workers or other personnel on hand to help 
     unload the water and ice, Mr. Wessel said. ``I almost told 
     the guys to leave, but people are wanting the water,'' he 
     said. ``The drivers distributed it.''
       Inside New Orleans, said Dr. Joseph Guarisco, chief of the 
     emergency department of Ochsner Clinic Foundation, a 580-bed 
     hospital in New Orleans above the water line, said there was 
     confusion about where to direct evacuees seeking shelter.
       For a couple of days, Dr. Guarisco said, he directed a 
     stream of patients to what he understood was a FEMA mass-
     casualty tent at the intersection of Interstate 10 and 
     Causeway Boulevard. ``A number came back and said, `there's 
     no one there.''' Dr. Guarisco said.
       Some critics have blamed the war in Iraq, and the 
     deployment of thousands of troops, including National Guard 
     members, to that effort. President Bush has vehemently denied 
     that charge. The administration has said problems on the 
     ground were due to an unexpectedly severe storm and 
     unanticipated flooding.
       Four weeks before the hurricane, Lt. Colonel Pete 
     Schneider, of the Louisiana National Guard, told WGNO, a 
     local ABC affiliate, that when guard members left for Iraq 
     last October, they took a lot of needed equipment with them, 
     including dozens of high-water vehicles, Humvees, refueling 
     tankers and generators that would be needed in the event a 
     major natural disaster hit the state.
       ``You've got combatant commanders over there who need it, 
     they say they need it, they don't want to lose what they have 
     and we certainly understand that,'' he said. ``It's a matter 
     of us educating that combatant commander [that] we need it 
     back here as well.''
       Col. Schneider also said the state had enough equipment to 
     get by, and that if Louisiana were to get hit by a major 
     hurricane, the neighboring states of Mississippi, Alabama and 
     Florida had all agreed to help. In the end, those states were 
     hit by Katrina as well.
       The U.S. Army has a large facility, Fort Polk, in 
     Leesville, La., about 270 miles northwest of New Orleans. 
     Officials at Fort Polk, which has nearly 8,000 active duty 
     soldiers, said their contribution so far has consisted of a 
     few dozen soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division manning 
     purification equipment and driving half-ton trucks filled 
     with supplies and equipment. The first contingent of soldiers 
     didn't receive orders until Saturday afternoon.
       A spokeswoman at Fort Polk said she did not know why the 
     base received its deployment orders so late in the game. 
     ``You'd have to ask the Pentagon,'' she said. A senior Army 
     official said the service was reluctant to commit the 4th 
     brigade of the 10th Mountain Division from Fort Polk, because 
     the unit, which numbers several thousand soldiers, is in the 
     midst of preparing for an Afghanistan deployment in January.
       Instead, the Pentagon chose to send upwards of 7,500 
     soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas 
     and the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C., along 
     with Marines from California and North Carolina. Soldiers 
     from the 82nd Airborne Division are able to deploy anywhere 
     in the world in 18 hours. It took several days for them to 
     arrive on the ground in Louisiana.
       There, no piece of equipment was more necessary than 
     helicopters. But in the first 48 hours after the levees were 
     breached, the shortage of helicopters became acute. FEMA 
     wanted choppers to save stranded residents, while the Army 
     Corps of Engineers needed the aircraft, known as ``rotary 
     wing'' in military jargon, to repair the breaches. The Coast 
     Guard, the primary agency responding to the disaster in New 
     Orleans, had a total of 20 aircraft in the area, mostly 
     helicopters, which focused solely on rescue operations.
       ``We have very limited aviation assets and rotary wing is 
     what we need to put materials into those breaches, and that's 
     the very asset we need to do search and rescue and save 
     victims, so our efforts became something of a second priority 
     and our initial plan was delayed a bit because of that,'' 
     says Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the Army Corps of 
     Engineers.
       A FEMA spokesman said the Coast Guard and National Guard 
     had adequate numbers of helicopters on hand, but that rescue 
     and supply operations were hampered by other factors, 
     including limited airspace around New Orleans, which is 
     geographically small. ``You put in 30 helicopters in that 
     area and you create a dangerous situation,'' said the 
     spokesman, Marty Bahamonde.
       On the supply front, helicopters flew food to the 
     Superdome, he said, but the helipad there could only 
     accommodate small aircraft, wnich couldn't hold many 
     supplies.
       Communications systems also broke down, as they did at the 
     World Trade Center in 2001, preventing emergency officials 
     from communicating with each other and the military. That led 
     to the odd juxtaposition of top federal officials praising 
     the rescue effort and denying problems at New Orleans' 
     overcrowded convention center while TV cameras showed people 
     there crying for help.
       Flooding and power shortages appear to be behind most of 
     the serious communications problems, but incompatible radio 
     systems didn't help. Emergency responders in New Orleans and 
     three nearby parishes all use different radio systems. New 
     Orleans and nearby Jefferson Parish both use radios that 
     operate on the 800 Mhz band, according to a Louisiana State 
     Police interoperability report, but they were manufactured by 
     different vendors. That means officials there had up to five 
     channels on which to talk to one another.
       ``Communication is always difficult in emergency situations 
     because of increased traffic,'' says William Vincent of the 
     Lafayette Office of Homeland Security and Emergency 
     Preparedness, about 135 miles from New Orleans. Emergency 911 
     dispatchers in Lafayette fielded calls from New Orleans 
     residents who still had working cellphones but couldn't reach 
     local police.
       New Orleans officials had equipment at the fire 
     department's communication center that could link otherwise 
     incompatible local and federal systems. It was reportedly 
     knocked out by flooding.
       Another problem: Even after 9/11, local officials and 
     federal emergency responders don't typically use the same 
     radio frequencies, which can make communication difficult 
     until agreements are reached on sharing channels.
       As handheld radios began losing power in New Orleans, 
     police officers and other emergency responders had no way of 
     recharging them. Unlike radios used by firefighters combating 
     wild fires, which can be powered by disposable batteries 
     found in any grocery store, a typical handheld police 
     emergency radio uses rechargeable batteries similar to those 
     powering cell phones, according to Ron Haraseth, director of 
     automated frequency coordination at the Association of 
     Public-Safety Communications Officers.
       FEMA itself seemed to frequently have bad information. At a 
     Tuesday press conference Bill Lokey, federal coordinating 
     officer for FEMA and the agency representative on site, 
     downplayed the severity of the flooding caused by the 
     breaches in New Orleans, saying the water wasn't rising in 
     most areas. ``I don't want to alarm everybody that, you know, 
     New Orleans is filling up like a bowl,'' he said. ``That's 
     just not happening.''
       Within hours, much of the city was under water, and Mr. 
     Lokey was calling Katrina the most significant natural 
     disaster to hit the United States.''
       The possible problems had long been trumpeted. In June 
     2004, FEMA spent more than half a million dollars to 
     commission a

[[Page 19572]]

     ``catastrophic hurricane disaster plan'' from IEM Inc., a 
     Baton Rouge-based emergency-management and homeland security 
     consulting firm. A report analyzing results of a mock 
     hurricane hitting New Orleans, dubbed ``Hurricane Pam,'' was 
     envisioned and a response and recovery plan was to be drawn 
     up.
       During a five-day mock exercise in July 2004, emergency-
     management responders huddled in Baton Rouge to plan a 
     response to ``Hurricane Pam,'' a Category 3 storm which 
     featured 120 miles per hour winds and a storm surge that 
     topped New Orleans's levees. For reasons that aren't clear, 
     the mock exercise never anticipated the levees giving way, 
     despite such warnings. Even-so, the mock hurricane--destroyed 
     500,000 buildings in New Orleans and displaced one million 
     residents.
       The group developed a plan to get stranded residents out of 
     the way and construction of a ``command structure'' with 
     enough space for upwards of 800 rescue workers. A report, 
     dated Jan. 5 of this year, detailed recommendations from the 
     exercise and was provided to FEMA, an IEM spokeswoman said. 
     FEMA has not released the report.
                                  ____


                  Title III: Preparedness and Recovery

       The DHS Emergency Preparedness and Recovery functions are 
     intended to improve the nation's capability to reduce losses 
     from all disasters, including terrorist attacks. Table 6 
     includes funds expended during FY2003 for these functions, 
     and compares them to amounts requested for FY2004, 
     recommended by each House, and approved by conferees in the 
     final version ultimately enacted.

                                       TABLE 6. PREPAREDNESS AND RECOVERY
                                                 ($ in millions)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                 FY2003    FY2004    FY2004    FY2004    FY2004
                     Operational component                       Enacted   Request    House    Senate     Conf.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                      Title III: Preparedness and Recovery
 
Office of Domestic Preparedness...............................     3,236     3,558     3,513     3,638     4,037
    Basic formula grants (state and local)....................     1,006        --     1,900     1,250     1,700
    Emerg. Wartime Supplement. (P.L. 108-11)..................     1,330        --        --        --        --
    St. & loc. law enforce., terrorism prevent................        --       500       500       500       500
    Firefighter assistance grants.............................        --       500        --       750       750
    Hi-threat, hi-density urban areas.........................       700        --       500       750       725
    Other assistance; national programs.......................       200     2,558       613       388       362
Counter-terrorism fund........................................       160        40        20        20        10
Emergency Preparedness and Response...........................     3,373     4,352     5,110     3,603     4,402
    Admin; regional operations................................       798       165       169        --       171
    Operating expenses........................................        --        --        --       827        --
    Prepare., mitigation, response & recovery.................        --       163       363       150       225
    Public health programs....................................       498       434       484        --       484
    Biodefense countermeasure (current year)..................        --       890       890        --       890
    (advance appropriations)..................................        --   (4,703)   (4,703)        --   (4,703)
    Biodefense countermeas. (10-year total)...................        --   (5,593)   (5,593)        --   (5,593)
    Grant programs............................................       169       300       200       165       180
    Emergency food and shelter................................       152       153       153       153       153
    Firefighter assistance grants.............................       745        --       760        --        --
    Disaster relief...........................................       776     1,956     1,800     1,956     1,800
    National pre-disaster mitigation fund.....................        --        --        --        --       150
    Flood map modernization fund..............................       149       200       200       200       200
    National flood insurance fund.............................        89        90        91       110       110
    Disaster assistance direct loan program...................         1         1         1         1         1
    Cerro Grande Fire claims..................................        --        --        --        38        38
    Misc. adj.; rescissions; transfers; rounding..............        -4        --        --         3        --
      Subtotal: Title III (current year, net).................     6,769     7,950     8,643     7,261     8,449
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: Rounding may affect totals. Amounts for FY2004 do not include a 0.59% across-the-board reduction called
  for by conferees on H.R. 2673 (Consolidated Appropriations for FY2004), to which the House has agreed, and
  which awaits Senate action (see page 10).
Source: H. Rept. 108-169; S. Rept. 108-86; H. Rept. 108-280 (Conference report).



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