[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 23147-23150]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       HURRICANE KATRINA RESPONSE

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, today I rise to discuss how we could be 
doing better in our response to Hurricane Katrina. I just spoke with 
one of Louisiana's Senators coming over to the Chamber to speak, and 
the word that I heard with respect to the situation on the ground, 
particularly the response of FEMA to the ongoing crisis, was 
discouraging. We can do better. We have to be able to do better for the 
people there and for those who are footing the bill, the taxpayers.
  Hurricane Katrina was truly an unprecedented event. It was in all 
likelihood the worst natural disaster in our Nation's history. It was 
certainly the worst natural disaster I have witnessed in my lifetime. I 
can understand then that there might be some mistakes made, that there 
might not be easy solutions to some of the problems faced by millions 
of Americans directly affected by this storm. But I believe there are 
too many key areas where we have experienced clear failures that just 
cannot be shrugged off. We have all heard about the slow initial 
response to the storm. We have also heard about the no-bid contracts 
that probably weren't necessary. But I am going to speak for a few 
minutes today about a truly distressing failure that is leading to 
hardship among Katrina evacuees and is also wasting a lot of Federal 
taxpayer dollars.
  As my colleagues are aware, hundreds of thousands of gulf coast 
residents have seen their homes severely damaged. Too many have seen 
them completely destroyed. Many of these people are still living far 
away from home, with little or no hope of returning to their 
communities any time soon, if ever. FEMA has moved swiftly in recent 
weeks to move Katrina evacuees out of temporary mass shelters that we 
saw in places such as the Astrodome in Houston. The problem is that 
many evacuees are still living in hotels today, waiting for FEMA to 
move them to longer term temporary housing. There have been a number of 
media reports recently that FEMA is currently spending millions of 
dollars every day to house hundreds of thousands of these evacuees in 
hotels around our country. The total cost of this program, according to 
the Washington Post this morning, will likely approach $200 million by 
the end of this month alone. Worse yet, FEMA has apparently not even 
been keeping track of the number of evacuees in hotels.
  I ask unanimous consent that several articles on this subject be 
printed in the Record.

[[Page 23148]]

  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Oct. 19, 2005]

                   A Big Cut in Katrina's Hotel Bill

              (By Jacqueline L. Salmon and Spencer S. Hsu)


            Program Evacuees Were Miscounted, Red Cross Says

       The American Red Cross said yesterday that it has vastly 
     overstated the number--and potential cost--of Hurricane 
     Katrina evacuees staying in hotel rooms because of errors in 
     how it interpreted its data.
       Embarrassed officials from the charity acknowledged that 
     instead of housing 600,000 displaced people, the hotel 
     program--paid for by the federal government--is housing 
     200,000 storm evacuees.
       Red Cross officials attributed the error to the misreading 
     of daily reports from a consultant handling the hotel 
     placements: Staff members mistook a cumulative tally of 
     people who had lived in hotels to date for the daily hotel 
     population.
       ``Clearly, somewhere we went off the track,'' said Armond 
     Mascelli, Red Cross vice president for domestic response 
     operations.
       Compounding the error, the Federal Emergency Management 
     Agency kept no independent count of the program's 
     beneficiaries or its costs, said FEMA spokeswoman Mary-
     Margaret Walker. She said FEMA apparently was relying on the 
     erroneous numbers as it searched frantically for other 
     housing options for evacuees.
       The revision in the number of people in hotels could cut in 
     half the $425 million estimate for the program. It is also 
     prompting FEMA to reevaluate long-term housing needs for 
     storm evacuees, said spokeswoman Frances Marine. This month, 
     FEMA's acting director, R. David Paulison, estimated that 
     400,000 to 600,000 households will require mid- to long-term 
     housing.
       The Red Cross said yesterday that it now expects the 
     program to cost about $220 million. FEMA does not pay for 
     hotel rooms until it gets receipts, so the error has not cost 
     the agency, Marine said.
       FEMA officials said 1.6 million people have registered for 
     assistance because of Hurricane Katrina and 700,000 people 
     have sought help for damage caused by Hurricane Rita.
       The hotel program, conceived by the Red Cross as shelters 
     overflowed immediately after Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, 
     has become the main housing program for evacuees.
       This week, FEMA told housing industry representatives that 
     it plans to move storm evacuees out of hotels and into a less 
     costly rental-assistance program as soon as Dec. 1.
       FEMA officials have concluded ``that it's going to be quite 
     a while before a lot of people can actually go back. 
     Therefore, keeping people in hotels and motels for any 
     extended period of time doesn't make sense,'' said Jim 
     Arbury, a senior vice president for the National Apartment 
     Association and National Multi Housing Council.
       Red Cross officials said they learned of the error after a 
     New York Times reporter alerted them to it Monday night. It 
     comes as the charity tries to raise $2 billion in private 
     donations to cover its costs of caring for Katrina victims, a 
     figure that does not include the hotel program.
       The blunder is a black eye for the Red Cross that could 
     taint the entire nonprofit sector, warned Paul Light, a New 
     York University professor of public service.
       ``It's hugely embarrassing for the sector,'' Light said. 
     ``I don't believe there is any malfeasance here. But . . . 
     the notion that the Red Cross simply cannot track where the 
     money is going feeds into this growing concern that charities 
     cannot be trusted to spend their money wisely.''
                                  ____


                [From the New York Times, Oct. 13, 2005]

           $11 Million a Day Spent on Hotels for Storm Relief

                            (By Eric Lipton)

       Washington, Oct. 12.--Straining to meet President Bush's 
     mid-October deadline to clear out shelters, the federal 
     government has moved hundreds of thousands of evacuees from 
     Hurricane Katrina into hotel rooms at a cost of about $11 
     million a night, a strategy local officials and some members 
     of Congress criticize as incoherent and wasteful.
       The number of people in hotels has grown by 60 percent in 
     the past two weeks as some shelters closed, reaching nearly 
     600,000 as of Tuesday. Even so, relief officials say they 
     cannot meet the deadline, as more than 22,000 people were 
     still in shelters in 14 states on Wednesday.
       The reliance on hotels has been necessary, housing 
     advocates say, because the Federal Emergency and Management 
     Agency has had problems installing mobile homes and travel 
     trailers for evacuees and has been slow to place victims in 
     apartments that real estate executives say are available 
     throughout the southeast.
       Hotel costs are expected to grow to as much as $425 million 
     by Oct. 24, a large expense never anticipated by the FEMA, 
     which is footing the bill. While the agency cannot say how 
     that number will affect overall spending for storm relief, 
     critics point out that hotel rooms, at an average cost of $59 
     a night, are significantly more expensive than apartments and 
     are not suitable for months-long stays.
       Officials in cities from Dallas to Atlanta, which are 
     accommodating thousands of evacuees, give credit for getting 
     90 percent of the victims out of shelters. But they say they 
     are frustrated by FEMA's record in helping place people in 
     more adequate housing.
       ``Deplorable. Disappointing. Outrageous. That is how I feel 
     about it,'' said the Atlanta mayor, Shirley Franklin, a 
     Democrat, in a telephone interview on Wednesday. ``The 
     federal response has just been unacceptable. It is like 
     talking to a brick wall.''
       Even conservative housing experts have criticized the Bush 
     administration's handling of the temporary housing response. 
     ``I am baffled,'' said Ronald D. Utt, a former senior 
     official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development 
     and Reagan administration aide who is now a senior fellow at 
     the Heritage Foundation, the conservative research 
     organization. ``This is not incompetence. This is willful. 
     That is the only way I can explain it.''
       Nicol Andrews, a FEMA spokeswoman, said the federal 
     government was moving as quickly as it could to find 
     temporary housing. But the scale of the catastrophe has made 
     it difficult, she said.
       ``Clearly we have never encountered the size and scope of a 
     disaster like Hurricane Katrina,'' she said. ``Housing half a 
     million people is a challenge by any standard.''
       The American Red Cross started the hotel program days after 
     Hurricane Katrina struck, when it became clear that the 
     shelters it had opened were not adequate to deal with the 
     600,000 to 700,000 families displaced by the storm, a 
     spokeswoman, Carrie Martin, said.
       The hotel program was intended to last a couple of weeks 
     but has twice been extended by FEMA. Now Red Cross officials 
     are saying there is no end to the initiative, which pays for 
     192,424 rooms in 9,606 hotels across the United States, in a 
     range of cities as diverse as Casper, Wyo., and Anchorage, 
     Alaska.
       Congress last month appropriated a $62.3 billion for the 
     relief effort, most of it designated for FEMA. The agency had 
     told Congress that it expected to spend more than $2 billion 
     to buy up to 300,000 travel trailers and mobile homes to 
     house displaced residents. The agency also planned to give 
     out $23.2 billion in assistance to victims for emergency 
     needs and for temporary housing and housing repairs.
       But the temporary housing program has been troubled since 
     the start, observers say. Instead of setting up as many as 
     30,000 trailers and mobile homes every two weeks, as of 
     Tuesday, just 7,308 were occupied. Even counting berths on 
     the four ships that FEMA has leased and rooms on military 
     bases and elsewhere, the agency has provided only 10,940 
     occupied housing units for victims in the three Gulf states.
       FEMA, reacting to criticism that it might create super-
     concentrated slums, has scaled back plans to build so-called 
     FEMA villes with up to 25,000 trailers.
       Even a less ambitious plan--complexes with 200 or so 
     units--has been slow to unfold. FEMA officials cite the 
     reluctance by some rural parishes or landowners to welcome 
     evacuees.
       But landowners and some state officials in Louisiana blame 
     bureaucratic fumbles by FEMA. Bill Bacque, co-owner of a 
     trailer park in Lafayette, La., said he offered property for 
     45 trailers within days of the storm. Negotiations with FEMA 
     were still under way this week, he said. ``Things do not move 
     fast,'' Mr. Bacque said.
       Late last month, FEMA began handing out $2,358 for three 
     months so that families in shelters or hotels could rent 
     apartments.
       To date, more than 415,000 households have been approved 
     for that aid, totaling $979 million. But FEMA officials 
     cannot say how many families have used the money for 
     apartments, or simply spent it on expenses while also living 
     in a government-financed hotel room.
       David Degruy, his wife, Debra, and their six children, of 
     New Orleans, have done just that while staying in two rooms 
     paid for by FEMA at the Greenway Inn and Suites in Houston.
       ``We're trying to save the money so that when do get in a 
     house we'll be able to buy things,'' Mr. Degruy said. ``We 
     eat out sometimes, we buy clothes, personal hygiene things.''
       Some officials criticize FEMA for a passive approach in 
     dealing with cities and hurricane evacuees.
       Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, who 
     sits on a House panel that helps oversee the housing effort, 
     complained that it was unreasonable for the federal 
     government to expect that a family led by jobless parents, 
     with no car, little savings and little familiarity with a new 
     city could independently find an apartment.
       ``The administration's policy is incoherent and socially 
     seriously flawed,'' he said in an interview.
       Real estate officials say that although there are few 
     available apartments in Louisiana, there are many vacancies 
     in apartment buildings across the South, including perhaps 
     300,000 in Texas alone.
       ``What are these guys doing?'' Jim Arbury, an official with 
     the National Multi Housing Council, a group of building 
     owners and managers, said of FEMA. ``All of this housing is 
     available now.''

[[Page 23149]]

       Some housing experts say the Bush administration should 
     follow the approach taken after the 1994 Northridge 
     earthquake in Los Angeles, when displaced residents were 
     given prepaid housing vouchers instead of having to negotiate 
     and pay a lease on their own.
       ``We are wasting money hand over fist because we did not 
     deploy the right policy tools,'' said Bruce Katz, a vice 
     president at the Brookings Institution, a liberal research 
     group in Washington. ``We could have thousands, if not tens 
     of thousands of families, in stable permanent housing right 
     now. And we would not have to turn to these costly measures, 
     like hotels, motels and cruise ships.''
       Ms. Andrews, the FEMA spokeswoman, defended the housing 
     policy. ``The program is designed to give those who it 
     affects the most the control over their own lives,'' she 
     said.
       Some cities, including Houston and San Antonio, have taken 
     an active role in helping families find housing by creating 
     their own voucher program, identifying vacant units, paying 
     for six-month leases and then turning over the unit to the 
     evacuees. FEMA has promised to reimburse the cities for the 
     housing costs.
       ``You can't just give people a check and say, `Good luck, 
     we will see you,''' said San Antonio's assistant city 
     manager, Christopher J. Brady. ``It would not be a sufficient 
     solution.''
       FEMA officials said other cities can set up similar 
     programs. But Mayor Franklin of Atlanta and Mayor Laura 
     Miller of Dallas have said they cannot do so without being 
     paid in advance by the federal government.
       Expressing frustration that she could not offer more help 
     to the 39,000 displaced people who have come to Georgia, 
     Mayor Franklin said FEMA's expectations that her city could 
     advance housing money were unrealistic.
       ``Our government is not large enough to do that,'' she 
     said. ``We can't absorb the costs.''
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, Oct. 12, 2005]

                Housing Aid Called Too Much, Too Little

                          (By Spencer S. Hsu)


         fema critics cite waste as evacuees stran to pay rent

       The Federal Emergency Management Agency's evolving efforts 
     to shelter Hurricane Katrina victims continue to waste huge 
     amounts of taxpayer dollars and could soon leave many 
     evacuees short of money and facing eviction, according to 
     renter advocates and housing industry officials.
       The concerns focus on FEMA's extension of an $8.3 million-
     a-day program to house 549,000 people in hotel rooms beyond 
     an Oct. 15 deadline and its handling of a new rental 
     assstance program, which offers displaced families a lump sum 
     of $2,358 for three months' rent. The disaster agency has 
     previously drawn criticism for its troubled $1 billion-plus 
     effort to house hurricane evacuees in 125,000 trailers.
       The National Low Income Housing Coalition, an advocacy 
     group, said that ecause the rent program is based on the 
     $786-per-month national median rent for a two-bedroom 
     apartment--rather than city-by-city rates used by the 
     Department of Housing and Urban Development--many evacuees 
     taken to more costly cities are already short on cash. 
     Typically, the coalition said, renters must pay a deposit and 
     first month's rent; it cited Washington as an example, where 
     the average rent is about $1,100 and where about 5,000 people 
     have been resettled.
       Apartment owners say they also are encountering problems 
     collecting rents because FEMA hands money directly to storm 
     victims, instead of using housing vouchers or payments to 
     landlords as HUD does for some low-income renters. Some 
     families that left their homes with only what they could 
     carry have used FEMA's cash for food, clothing and 
     transportation.
       ``We felt if we did the right thing, FEMA would step up and 
     provide housing assistance for all these folks. Here we are 
     four weeks later, and a lot of these folks simply do not have 
     rent money to pay,'' said Kirk H. Tate, a member of Houston's 
     Katrina housing task force and a parter at Orion Real Estate 
     Services Inc., which manages 12,000 apartments in the city.
       Houston authorities welcomed 20,000 Katrina households into 
     rental units in as few as three or four days, mostly waiving 
     deposit and rent requirements, Tate said. ``The last thihg we 
     want to have to do is ask for them to move out when they 
     can't pay the rent,'' he said, but property owners have 
     mortgages, utilities and expenses to pay and may need to 
     start eviction proceedings by month's end.
       Benicha McCraney, 49, left New Orleans two days before 
     Hurricane Katrina with two children and a suitcase holding 
     three days' worth of clothes. Now the family lives in a 
     $1,096-per-month two-bedroom apartment in a suburban Houston 
     complex called Tranquility Bay.
       She received $2,358 for three months from FEMA but 
     estimates her monthly expenses at about $1,700.
       With $1,500 in savings and her husband, a police officer, 
     fearing he will be laid off in New Orleans, McCraney is 
     worried about paying for children's clothes when the weather 
     cools.
       McCraney is not facing eviction yet, but having lost her 
     home to floodwaters, she is postponing replacing the worn 
     tires on her car. ``I would like to stay here as long as I 
     can,'' she said. ``I don't have anywhere else in the world to 
     go.''
       The warnings come as a wide range of players in the 
     nation's housing and lodging industries express mounting 
     exasperation with FEMA's shifting efforts to cope with the 
     evacuee crisis. Although the administration has proposed 
     cruise ships, trailers, President Bush's nascent ``urban 
     homesteading'' initiative, hotels and now apartment grants, 
     they say FEMA is ignoring advice from experts inside and 
     outside the government.
       ``The normal FEMA programs just aren't working. They may be 
     good for 1,500, 2,000 people, but when you're talking a half 
     a million, they do not work,'' said Douglas S. Culkin, 
     executive vice president of the National Apartment 
     Association.
       Culkin said 1 million rental units are vacant in the 
     southeastern United States at half the rate of FEMA's $1,770-
     a-month hotel program. He called the current spending rate of 
     $250 million a month ``a horrendous waste of tax dollars.''
       Linda Couch, deputy director of the low-income housing 
     coalition, agreed that taxpayer money could be saved by using 
     vacant apartment units. ``If the federal government made a 
     choice to subsidize them at the rents they are available at, 
     it looks like it still would be less than having them live in 
     a hotel,'' she said.
       FEMA spokeswoman Nicol Andrews said that the agency's 
     rental aid program can be extended to 18 months. If renters 
     keep receipts and show that their housing costs exceed $786 a 
     month, FEMA will allow them to spend more on rent, Andrews 
     said. But Congress has set a $26,200 limit per family for 
     FEMA aid of all kinds, including home repairs, for Katrina 
     victims.
       Andrews acknowledged that the trailer process is not moving 
     as fast as the agency would like. She declined to comment on 
     criticism from the housing sector but noted that FEMA is 
     establishing huge new programs and that shelter populations 
     have dropped 75 percent in two weeks.
       The scale of Katrina's exodus is immense and growing. On 
     Thursday, FEMA's acting director, R. David Paulison, 
     increased the agency's estimate of the number of families 
     expected to need housing for up to several months, from 
     300,000 to between 400,000 and 600,000.
       FEMA said Friday that the number of people in temporary 
     shelters, which Bush has pledged to clear by mid-October, has 
     fallen to 31,500 from a peak of more than 300,000. FEMA is 
     providing rental assistance to 412,000 displaced households 
     and has registered 2 million storm victims.
       ``The recovery process for Hurricane Katrina will be 
     neither fast nor easy,'' Paulison said. ``Many . . . 
     rightfully are concerned about the cost, as we all are.''
       Critics in Congress and elsewhere have focused on large 
     trailer contracts and the difficulty FEMA has encountered in 
     acquiring trailers and sites for trailer parks. So far about 
     6,800 FEMA trailers are occupied by emergency workers and 
     evacuees across the Gulf Coast. Some also have criticized 
     spending $236 million to house 7,000 people on three Carnival 
     Cruise Lines ships.
       Last week, three major national apartment owner 
     associations criticized FEMA for ignoring their offers of 
     help and expressed bewilderment over why the agency extended 
     the hotel program. The average room rate of $59 per day is 
     more than twice the cost of rental vouchers in HUD's low-
     income Section 8 housing program and the rental aid provided 
     by FEMA and HUD to Katrina victims. It also exceeds the 
     median monthly rent in some of the nation's most expensive 
     cities.
       The groups cited 50,000 vacant apartments in Dallas-Fort 
     Worth alone and 1 million in the southeastern United States 
     at rents that range from $700 to $1,200 a month-- vacancy 
     totals confirmed by others outside the industry.
       ``Our message is simple. There are currently tens of 
     thousands of available rental units that would offer evacuees 
     the opportunity to more quickly recover from their 
     devastating losses,'' the National Multi Housing Council, the 
     National Apartment Association and the National Leased 
     Housing Association wrote to HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson 
     and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. ``To extend 
     the hotel program indefinitely prolongs homelessness and 
     makes no sense,'' they said.
       Housing officials point to the city of Dallas's Project 
     Exodus as an example of better planning. It has placed about 
     1,000 people in 481 apartments using $2.5 million raised 
     through contributions by individuals and large companies. The 
     units rent for HUD market rates, including utilities. 
     Although city funds are set to expire after 60 days, Dallas 
     expects FEMA to pick up costs after that.
       Houston also has agreed to pay up to 12 months of housing 
     assistance for Katrina victims, hoping for FEMA 
     reimbursement, Tate said.
       About 37,000 evacuees are in Dallas area hotel rooms, said 
     Miller, and more than 150,000 evacuees are in rooms across 
     Texas.
       ``We said, We can't wait for FEMA,''' said Dallas Mayor 
     Laura Miller. ``What worries

[[Page 23150]]

     me is reading about all these other cities who are waiting 
     for trailer homes to show up so they can re-create these 
     trailer villages. That would be the worst thing you can do.''

  Mr. CARPER. While it is certainly reasonable to house evacuees in 
hotels on a short-term basis, this situation is simply unacceptable 
nearly 2 months after Katrina struck the coast. I am told that real 
estate and housing experts have pointed out that perhaps hundreds of 
thousands of suitable and likely much more affordable apartments could 
be had throughout the gulf coast region. I am certain that they could 
probably be had for significantly less than the cost of a hotel room. 
In addition, the Washington Post recently reported that a joint FEMA-
HUD rental assistance program is likely wasting millions of dollars. In 
at least some cases, the program is not doing much to help evacuees in 
some parts of the country find suitable housing.
  Each evacuee participating in the voucher program, according to the 
Post, initially receives a subsidy amount based on the national median 
rent for 3 months. In some parts of the country, such as Houston, the 
national median rent probably isn't enough to find suitable housing. In 
other communities, it might be more than enough. This means that 
Katrina evacuees in some parts of the country may be getting more 
assistance than they need, and those in higher cost areas might not be 
getting what they need to provide for their families.
  It has been suggested that the solution to the housing crisis in the 
gulf might be to place evacuees in trailers or some other form of 
manufactured housing. But I have heard reports that FEMA is buying many 
of its trailers straight off the lot at retail prices. I have also 
heard that there are thousands of trailers just sitting around 
unoccupied in vacant lots. We have all heard stories about how 
miserable some of the trailer camps are to live in that FEMA has set up 
in places like Florida.
  We can do better than this. FEMA owes it to Katrina victims and to 
the American taxpayers to find a more comfortable, less expensive way 
to house our fellow Americans who are going through such a difficult 
time right now. That is why I am sending a letter today to Acting FEMA 
Director David Paulison to ask him to tell us exactly what FEMA's plan 
is to get Katrina evacuees out of hotels and into more stable living 
environments so that they can begin the process of bringing their lives 
as close to normal as possible.
  The problems and the waste we are seeing in FEMA's Katrina housing 
program remind me yet again that we need to do some work to ensure that 
the money we are spending to help Katrina victims is spent wisely and 
effectively. To date we have approved in the Congress $62 billion for 
Katrina. More money will probably be needed, but given the number of 
stories we see almost on a daily basis now about financial 
mismanagement, about confusion at FEMA, and the Department of Homeland 
Security, we should not be writing a blank check.
  A recovery effort this large needs additional oversight to make sure 
the money we are spending is going to the people who need it most, to 
make sure we eliminate wasteful spending and get the most bang for our 
buck, and to make sure we reduce the potential for fraud.
  It is my understanding that we are not sure what legislation is 
coming to the floor next week. I have a suggestion. The Homeland 
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, of which I am a member, 
approved two bills a couple of weeks ago that I believe are desperately 
needed to make sure Katrina recovery funds are spent properly and go to 
the people who are most in need.
  One of the bills we passed would appoint a chief financial officer to 
oversee the day-to-day use of Federal funds in the cleanup and 
reconstruction efforts underway in the gulf. I cosponsored this 
legislation with Senator Coburn of Oklahoma and Senator Obama of 
Illinois. It enjoys bipartisan support, including the cosponsorship, I 
believe, of both the Republican leader and Democratic leader of the 
Senate.
  The chief financial officer would oversee the various Federal 
agencies involved in the recovery efforts and hold them financially 
accountable. The CFO would be Congress's personal watchdog, issuing 
periodic financial reports about whether the money is going to the 
people who need it the most and whether it is being used to hire local 
workers who need jobs.
  The second bill would expand the authority of the inspector general 
assigned to Iraq reconstruction to oversee the Katrina recovery 
efforts. The expanded office would audit recovery operations and 
investigate allegations of waste, fraud, and inefficiency.
  Together, these two bills would better protect American taxpayers and 
bring some much-needed accountability to the recovery efforts.
  We shouldn't settle for the stories we see in the papers every day 
about the lack of decent housing for Katrina victims or the lack of 
competition for Federal contracts. We shouldn't read stories about 
waste and resign ourselves to the fact that waste is just something 
that happens in the Federal Government. We can do better, and we must. 
We owe it to the American taxpayers to do better, and we owe it to 
Katrina's victims to do better.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask permission to speak in morning 
business until Senator Brownback arrives.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________