[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 20453-20454]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     VICENTE FOX, HURRICANE LOOTER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Speaker, it seems tonight is the night for many of 
us to talk about the hurricane and the disastrous effects it has had on 
our country. I heard earlier a couple of my Democratic colleagues 
berating the majority leader about hurry up with money, hurry up and 
get it done.
  We want to help our friends on the Gulf Coast, but it is also 
important

[[Page 20454]]

that we do it sensibly and we pay some attention to the taxpayers here. 
Just yesterday, in Atlanta, one of the FEMA cards for $2,000 was used 
to buy a handbag. I guess you need a handbag if you are in dire 
straits, but this one was a Louis Vuitton, which does not mean much to 
me, except it was an $800 handbag. That is ludicrous. That is not what 
the American people expect for us to let happen.

                              {time}  1830

  We will be rebuilding the gulf coast States for years to come. We 
will do so with both public and private moneys, with cost estimates now 
running into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Estimates are that at 
least a half million Americans from the affected areas have permanently 
lost their jobs as their workplaces are totally destroyed.
  Mr. Speaker, we do want to help these people. We must help these 
people. It makes perfect sense that we ought to employ as many of these 
folks as possible in the rebuilding effort of the gulf coast. It is for 
their personal good we do that, and it is for the good of the country.
  Last week, the President approved a temporary waiver of Davis-Bacon 
labor rules for exactly that purpose, to allow many of these 
individuals to participate in federally funded reconstruction projects 
as general labor helpers. They cannot do that under Davis-Bacon. We 
need to follow that up with providing whatever vocational training is 
necessary to allow displaced workers to gain the skills necessary to 
fully participate in these reconstruction efforts.
  Let us do two things at once here.
  We need a revival of the Civilian Conservation Corps from the 1930s 
for this unprecedented national emergency. We should offer every able-
bodied displaced person an immediate training wage of $10 an hour on 
top of whatever other Federal benefits they may be receiving, and full-
time participation in this if they are receiving Federal benefits 
should be mandatory for all except the elderly or disabled. People who 
can work and yet will not help themselves should not ask other 
taxpayers to do it for them. There is good-paying work here for years 
for every able-bodied American who needs a job if we do the right 
thing. This has a great potential to build careers.
  But there is already somebody else with an eye for these construction 
jobs, Mexican President Vicente Fox. ```The reconstruction of that 
city,''' meaning New Orleans, ```and of that region is going to require 
a lot of labor,' Mr. Fox said of New Orleans, Mississippi, and Alabama. 
`And if there is anything Mexicans are good at, it is construction.''' 
That is a quote from the New York Times, September 5.
  While we appreciate the disaster aid assistance Mexico is providing 
by sending a military convoy across our southern border, we cannot 
afford to pay them back with American jobs of our hurricane victims. 
Rebuilding our gulf coast with labor from Mexico would divert a large 
part of the estimated $200 billion cost to rebuild, paid for by the 
American taxpayers, out of our economy and into ``foreign 
remittances,'' the monies sent back to Mexico from the United States by 
illegal immigrants. These ``remittances'' have now surpassed oil 
revenues as the number one source of income for Mexico. This is drawn 
directly out of our economy.
  We should not allow our national tragedy to become Mexico's gain.
  The time for talk should be over. The time for pleas for the 
administration to simply enforce the law should be over. Every police 
and sheriff's department in this Nation should begin vigorously 
enforcing immigration law while in the course of their routine duties. 
For every illegal worker not employed to rebuild the gulf coast, there 
is a ready job for the hundreds of thousands of legal American 
residents who just lost their jobs in this tragedy.
  The CLEAR Act that we just reintroduced has an excellent chance of 
passing this session; and, if it does, the Federal Government will be 
responsible for paying 100 percent of these local law enforcement costs 
for immigration law enforcement efforts.
  Hardship has a way of bringing families together. If there is 
anything positive that can come from such an incomprehensible disaster 
as Hurricane Katrina, it could likely be in forcing us to come back 
together to help defend each other, instead of letting potential 
taxpayer-funded jobs for storm victims to be looted by illegal 
immigrant labor cheered on by Mexican President Vicente Fox.

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