[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Page 22595]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      RELIEF FOR GULF COAST STATES

  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I will not take as much time as others have, 
but I would like to commend my colleague from Louisiana, Senator 
Landrieu, for her Herculean efforts over the last couple of days to try 
and convince this body to do everything it can to provide the needed 
relief for thousands of displaced individuals along the Gulf Coast, 
including, obviously, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and parts of 
Texas.
  I am really stunned, in a sense, by the response we are providing to 
this situation so far.
  On average we provide $5 billion a week to fund our ongoing efforts 
in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obviously, this funding is critical to protect 
our troops and the work they continue to undertake overseas. When the 
President has been asked how he plans to pay for these ongoing efforts, 
he says that he plans to pay for them using additional Federal 
resources that are not taken out of other Federal spending priorities.
  And yet when it comes to providing the necessary relief to our own 
citizens in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas, we are being 
told by the President that we absolutely have to use existing Federal 
resources to pay for recovery and relief efforts. We are being told 
that Federal resources cannot be provided unless we reduce other 
Federal spending priorities.
  I can understand the frustration of the Senator from Louisiana. She 
goes every week to community after community in her State and still 
sees the horrible circumstances under which thousands of people are 
living. Meanwhile, the Senate is about to take another week off. As 
literally hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens are suffering, 
we are leaving town instead of working together to provide adequate 
long-term disaster assistance in areas such as public health, 
education, housing, transportation and homeland security.
  The Senator from Louisiana took the floor over an extended period of 
time to talk about the importance of providing this relief: to care for 
the thousands of displaced children, to assist people who lost their 
homes, their businesses, their very livelihoods. Nevertheless, we are 
told by this administration and the leadership in Congress that no 
adequate assistance can be provided unless we cut vital spending 
elsewhere.
  If we do not have to find offsets for rebuilding Iraq and 
Afghanistan, then why do we have to find offsets to rebuild the Gulf 
Coast--our own soil? If this catastrophe were to happen in my State of 
Connecticut or anywhere else, we would all appreciate what our 
colleague from Louisiana has gone through and express our frustrations 
in the same way she has.
  So I join with Senator Landrieu and others who have already spoken. I 
am also waiting to hear about what offsets we are going to be forced to 
come up with to pay for the recovery and relief efforts along the Gulf 
Coast. They will most certainly come from domestic investments such as 
Medicaid that aid the poor, not from repealing the estate tax or other 
tax cuts that have aided only the wealthiest of Americans.
  I imagine that we will cut spending to services provided under 
Medicare and Medicaid--services that provide basic health care coverage 
to the poorest of our citizens who are the most dependent for their 
health care needs. There is a very sad irony to this. We are going to 
force the poor to bear the greatest burden on funding recovery and 
relief efforts along the Gulf Coast. In essence we are going to charge 
them to pay for this. What kind of logic is that? It is irrational, it 
is wrong, and we ought to be doing better by the people of our own 
country.
  I am disappointed that this body had to rush out of town and could 
not spend the additional time necessary to get this right for the 
people of the Gulf Coast.
  So I, again, applaud the Senator from Louisiana. I admire her 
courage. I certainly admire her tenacity in fighting as hard as she has 
been for the people of her State.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Allen). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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