[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 17374-17381]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 IMPROVING ENERGY, NATURAL DISASTER AND HEALTH CARE POLICIES IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Tsongas). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.

[[Page 17375]]


  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the honor to be 
recognized to address you here on the floor of Congress, and to kick 
off this Special Order moment, I would be pleased to yield 5 minutes to 
the gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Broun.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. I thank my colleague for yielding.
  America right now is drilling for ice on Mars. Yet we cannot drill 
for oil in America. This is insane. If we have the technology to 
explore beneath the surface of Mars, then we must have the technology 
to explore for oil here at home in an efficient, environmentally 
friendly fashion.
  Our home-grown energy businesses employ that technology off the coast 
of Louisiana today. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita toppled many of the oil 
rigs offshore, but there was no environmental catastrophe. Not one drop 
of oil was spilled. Not one drop washed up on the shorelines.
  I respect Louisiana Democrats Charlie Melancon and Mary Landrieu, who 
support their State's exploration and development in the face of stiff 
opposition within the Democratic Party's ranks.
  Why can't we learn from Louisiana's success?
  There are some who like to say we're facing an energy crisis, and 
then they'll use those two words to manipulate votes this December. For 
there truly to be an energy crisis, there would have to be a shortage 
of fuel. Fortunately, there isn't one today, but there is a shortage of 
courage in this body, a shortage of creativity and a shortage of will 
to do what needs to be done to ensure that there will never be another 
1970-style fuel shortage.
  The best way to cope with a crisis, real or not, is to avoid it in 
the first place. The Georgia Bulldogs are in my district, so you know I 
love a good football analogy. We all grew up with Charles Schultz and 
his Peanuts comic strip, so we are familiar with the image of Lucy's 
yanking the football away from Charlie Brown just as he's running to 
kick a field goal.
  What image better represents the Democratic leadership's approach to 
energy policy--this so-called new direction for our Nation? this new 
direction energy policy? the Democratic leadership's energy policy? A 
sound, obvious proposal comes to the table, such as expanding domestic 
resource exploration. The Democrats quickly yank it away from under the 
American consumer.
  Why? Because it's tradition for most of them to appease radical 
environmental groups and to oppose domestic exploration and production 
even in the face of rising costs and of increasing dependence upon 
Middle Eastern oil.
  Some of the ideas springing forth from the New Direction Congress are 
policies from an old era best left forgotten. I'm speaking about this 
absurd notion of nationalizing, read ``socializing'' our Nation's oil 
and gas businesses. The most recent mention of it has been quickly 
forgotten by the press, but I want to point out how this allegedly 
fresh idea has evolved without even going into the original idea's 
ultimate failure in the former Soviet Bloc.
  Nearly 80 percent of world oil reserves are controlled by nationally 
owned oil companies, not by American or by other private companies. 
Today, as a nation, we scoff at nationalized oil and gas production in 
Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia, but somehow socialization is 
acceptable to some Members of the ``New Direction'' House and Senate. 
To me, it's a new direction headed down an old path to a dead end.
  I reject socializing oil companies because it is un-American and 
because I trust our market economy. As we learned when Hurricane 
Katrina and Hurricane Rita caused no oil spills, offshore oil rigs are 
safe, and offshore oil rigs attract new marine life as we're still 
learning from the new artificial reefs there.
  One Democratic aide summarized the liberal energy plan as ``drive 
small cars and wait for the wind.'' We developed this picture of the 
Democratic Party's policy for energy in America. It's absurd. Well, 
Madam Speaker, not everybody owns a small car, and it's not windy every 
day. America wants energy solutions now, and we should vote to serve 
their interests, not the interests of the radical environmentalists.
  We've introduced a bill called the American Energy Plan. It 
encompasses all of the above, every single possible energy source that 
we can figure today, and we'll even stimulate the production of new 
sources that we may not even know about. We need to have a vote on that 
bill.
  The Georgia Bulldogs' head football coach, Mark Richt, has a saying 
he uses to energize the Georgia Bulldogs football team: Finish the 
drill. As a Congressman, I've got three words to energize America: 
Start the drill.
  We do that by voting for the American Energy Plan. We do that by 
voting to expand offshore drilling, ANWR drilling. We do that by voting 
to produce new nuclear energy and to permit new refineries. If Habitat 
for Humanity can build a house in 1 week that will withstand a 
hurricane, we can build a refinery to produce more gasoline for America 
in 1 year. We have to have a vote. The American public is absolutely 
dependent upon it. I want people to understand the reason that the gas 
prices are high at the pumps when you go pump your oil today. It is 
because we're not able to vote on the American Energy Plan or on some 
comprehensive means of establishing new oil supplies in America.
  I thank the gentleman for yielding. I yield back.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I appreciate the gentleman from Georgia's coming to 
the floor here tonight, Madam Speaker, and for addressing these issues 
that matter to America, also from a Georgia perspective.
  There are a lot of things I do want to say about energy tonight, 
Madam Speaker. Yet I think it's important for me to address first the 
situation that's going on in Iowa with the disasters that we've had.
  To lay some of this backdrop out for you, I have significant 
background when it comes to the experience of having been flooded 
myself. I go back to '93 when we had the 500-year flood event in Iowa. 
I can remember earlier than that, in about 1991, sitting down and 
actually playing gate tag in the airport with Ellen Gordon, who was the 
director of Iowa Emergency Management at the time.
  We worked out a system by which we could respond to disasters in 
Iowa. She was very, very good, and was in the business of making sure 
that we were prepared for disasters. Yet our discussion didn't really 
cover the breadth of the floods. It was more the idea of the more 
localized tornadoes that do come and that have visited our State and 
many others throughout the centuries.
  Our focus was on: What if there is a large fire? What if there is a 
series of tornadoes or of bad tornadoes? How could we put the equipment 
in and the people in to respond to that kind of disaster and clean it 
up?
  Yet, just a couple of years later, we had the 500-year flood event, 
and so it wasn't something that we had had previous significant 
experience with in our memories. Although, anyone can look back at the 
times before we did some of the Corps of Engineers' work that 
stabilized the Mississippi River on our east side and the Missouri 
River on the west border and some of the other major rivers, including 
the reservoirs that we built throughout the State on up through the Des 
Moines River that are designed to protect Des Moines. For example, 
there is the Saylorville Reservoir and the Red Rock down below Des 
Moines and the Coralville Reservoir that protects Iowa City. At least 
it did a respectable job of doing so. Those would be the major 
reservoirs in the State. Then additionally, there's Rathbun down in the 
south.
  It turns out that we have actually done work on all of those 
reservoirs, Madam Speaker. Having been under water myself and having 
dealt with four of our major projects in 1993 and having volunteered to 
go over to Keokuk to spend some days on a rock pile, which at that time 
was out in the middle of the Mississippi River which today is on the 
shoreline of the Mississippi River at Keokuk, I'm not without 
experience when it comes to floods and disasters.

[[Page 17376]]

  Having been one of the first Members of Congress to go down into New 
Orleans in the immediate aftermath of Katrina and having flown, really, 
all of that--most of it in helicopters, some of that in a plane--and 
having gone down on the ground and having traveled on the ground around 
New Orleans and into Louisiana--Slidell, Louisiana comes to mind 
immediately--and having slept in a Red Cross cot and having felt bad 
about it because I found out that a Red Cross personnel had given up 
his cot for me to sleep on, I've been in the middle of this. I've 
watched people when they've been hit by floods. I know, I think, what 
goes on in their heads and how it is when the flood waters come up. The 
faster they come up, the more adrenaline you get to try to stave off 
that flood and the more sandbags you can throw and the more you can 
mobilize, let's say, manpower and machinery to protect us from those 
floods and to try to keep the floodwater out of our critical 
infrastructure.
  When it crests and if it runs over the top of your levees and over 
the top of your sandbags and when you watch that fill up, it's a 
feeling of despair. It's a feeling of we tried as hard as we could. We 
did everything we could do to be ready for this, and then when it was 
time for all hands on deck, all hands were on deck. All men and women 
came to the levees, and they pitched the sandbags, and they did 
everything they could do to get ready. When the flood crests and you 
lose and when the water fills up in places where it has never been 
before, like in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and in places like Iowa City and 
Coralville, when that happens, you have a crushing feeling of despair.
  Sometimes there is that long wait, the wait for the water to go down 
because, especially on the eastern side of the State, along the 
Mississippi drainage area and in the Mississippi Valley, the water 
comes up slow, and it goes down slowly. So there's a longer period that 
it takes to be in a position to recover.
  On the west side of the district that I represent, the water goes up 
fast and comes down fast, and there's a shorter period of time that it 
takes for it to dry up and a shorter period of time for us to recover, 
but all the while that's going on, your adrenaline peaks at about the 
crest of the flood, and then it diminishes in the aftermath of the 
flood.
  As to where we are now, I was actually, I will say, surprised, sadly 
surprised, internally taken aback to see what I saw last Saturday in 
Cedar Rapids and in Iowa City. I know those towns. I know those cities. 
I know those river valleys. I've seen them flooded before, especially 
the Iowa River Valley, not so much the Cedar River Valley. I've not 
seen the cities of Iowa City and Cedar Rapids under water like I did 
when I flew over that just after the high watermark. First, I'll tell 
you what happened.
  It rained perhaps more than ever before in a section of Iowa that 
would be the northern half of the State, almost exactly the northern 
half of the State. It would be 100 miles from north to south, from the 
Minnesota border down to the south--that line and 300 miles roughly 
east and west. That area also expanded into southern Minnesota and into 
other places of the east and west of Iowa, but in that area in Iowa, 
100 miles by 300 miles--and there were intermittent rains and 
additional rains, but in one rain on one night and on one morning, Iowa 
took in that area of 100 by 300 miles no less than 4 inches of rain, 
something meeting and exceeding 10 inches of rain in other areas within 
that 100- by 300-mile area, three-30,000ths square miles with more than 
4 inches of rain and up to 10 inches of rain.
  When you see something like that, you see that it's probably more 
water than has ever come in a single rain before. When it came on 
saturated soils and as the water ran off of those hillsides and down 
the rivers and it crested at Cedar Rapids, the Cedar River cresting at 
Cedar Rapids--it did its share of flooding in Cedar Falls and in 
Waterloo, but when it crested at Cedar Rapids, that city had already 
been seeing the worst in '93. When the high watermarks in '93 were 
noted, the businesses looked at that and said this is as high as it's 
ever going to get. This is a 500-year event.

                              {time}  2230

  And so if I make sure that my business is above that elevation of the 
water crest in 1993, put it up, say, a foot above, who above that line 
would need to buy flood insurance? The rational thing is, when you get 
a 500-year flood event, you're probably not going to live to see 
another event where the water gets higher than it did.
  And it might be something that one could understand if it came back 
and it approached that level or exceeded the 500-year flood event level 
by a foot or so, but what really happened in Cedar Rapids was the high 
water mark there was in 1851, and the new high water mark set in the 
floods less than a couple of months ago crested 11.12 feet above the 
previous high water mark, which was set in 1851. That's not a level 
that anyone could have anticipated. It's not something anybody can 
build for. Its not something the Corps of Engineers can tell us that we 
can adjust for. It was a weather anomaly where huge rains came in--and 
just in the watershed areas, and broader, but it focused on those 
watershed areas. It sent the water down through the funnels that are 
the river valleys, the Cedar River Valley and the Iowa River Valley.
  And Cedar Rapids, the second largest city in Iowa, had its downtown 
flooded with something like 600 to 800 businesses flooded, and now, 
1,300 square blocks of residences that were flooded--probably more than 
that, but that would be one of the measures. And I'll submit this, 
Madam Speaker, that I've been to those places where we've had natural 
disasters and had floods and hurricanes.
  And I did a number of trips into New Orleans and I walked the streets 
of New Orleans and I went back to see their downtown dark when the 
power was off and the utilities weren't functioning and the businesses 
were gone. And some of them had the windows out and the doors open and 
they were being aired out, trying to dry them out. To go in and strip 
out the drywall off the walls--the wet drywall, I would add, if that's 
not an oxymoron--to have to go in and replace all the furniture and the 
carpet and the walls and the appliances and re-wire and come back in 
with new walls and new flooring and new carpeting, for example, and new 
furniture, to get all of that done takes time. It takes time to find 
people, it takes time to find the resources. And the sad thing is it 
takes a lot more time to find the money and know what you can plan on. 
All of that I've worked with in New Orleans. And all of that that I've 
described exists in downtown Cedar Rapids today and in the residential 
areas.
  To go into downtown Cedar Rapids on a Saturday afternoon and look 
around there and see there isn't any business functioning down there, 
that there are generators set up to run light plants to carry just some 
streetlights at night because the utilities aren't back up. There is a 
steam power system that has been providing that utility for the 
downtown Cedar Rapids; about 25 percent of the businesses have access 
to that and all the rest do not.
  There were businesses that were established businesses that have been 
there for--the building was functioning in that fashion for perhaps a 
century or more; never been flooded--or not flooded in our memory, 
anyway--but under water six, eight, 10, 12, 14 feet of water that went 
in and destroyed these businesses, depending on the elevation of the 
business and where the water decided it would want to go.
  This Congress, however much empathy they've provided--and I 
appreciate it all. And I appreciate, of course, the how responsive they 
had for Katrina--but this Congress has not reacted fast enough to the 
situations in Iowa and in Illinois and in the Midwest from these past 
floods.
  What we have done in this Congress to date is, in a supplemental 
bill, we brought $2.65 billion in funding to backfill FEMA, an existing 
account for FEMA. And that's all that's been done from an 
appropriations standpoint or from a policy standpoint.

[[Page 17377]]

  We do have a whole series of tax packages put together by Senator 
Grassley. And this tax package that he has put together is a good one, 
it does what can be done for tax relief. And it is the tax relief that 
was offered to the people and the businesses in New Orleans during 
Hurricane Katrina and Rita. It was that with some loopholes closed that 
were found by some folks down there--we were happy to close the 
loopholes. That tax package hasn't been moved. We don't have a response 
from Ways and Means here. I don't know that we have a response from the 
Finance Committee in the Senate and how that might be. Those things 
need to happen.
  The business people in these communities, in Iowa City and in Cedar 
Rapids, and the smaller communities up and down the river, including 
Columbus Junction and including Oakville, they need to have some 
definitive action on the part of this Congress. This Congress can act 
definitively when they see a disaster that grips their heart. Here's 
how they acted in Katrina back in 2005:
  September 2, 2005, we appropriated, in a special supplemental 
spending bill, $10.5 billion for the initial down payment on Katrina 
relief; $10.5 billion, September 2. Six days later--not a week later, 
six days later--Congress appropriated $51.8 billion for Katrina relief. 
That was September 8. Then December 30, Congress appropriated $29.1 
billion, Katrina relief. Then June 15, 2006, $19.3 billion, Katrina 
relief. Then on May 25, 2007, $7.7 billion, Katrina relief. And on 
November 13, 2007, late last year, $6.4 billion, Katrina relief. That 
adds up--and don't hold me to this math, this is a memo note--$123.5 
billion in Katrina relief that began when--the disaster declaration was 
made August 29, 2005. And on the second day of September, the first 
$10.5 billion came through. And then 6 days later, and then late 
December, then June of the following year, then May of the following 
year, then November also of last year; $123.5 billion, Madam Speaker.
  And this Congress--and the only measure is not how much money did we 
appropriate to backfill FEMA, that was $2.65 billion, in that same 
bill, Katrina relief, more than twice as much went to Katrina, $5.8 
billion, Madam Speaker.
  So I wouldn't make a big issue of this if I didn't think that there 
was a desperate need. And even though I had flown over the entire flood 
area--that we could identify at least in eastern Iowa--and western Iowa 
for that matter, and we had some of our own flood that wasn't as broad 
and probably not as severe, even though I've flown all over that and 
looked at that--and I know what floods look like from the air and the 
ground and I've lived them and I've been flooded myself--I was sadly 
surprised and gripped when I saw especially downtown Cedar Rapids with 
the businesses dark on a Saturday afternoon.
  And also, to talk to the businessmen and the businesswomen there that 
are trying to figure out what they can do without definitive answers 
and response, I know it's difficult. And I said with Katrina that even 
if Mayor Nagin and the Governor of Louisiana--let me just put it this 
way: Even if the city of New Orleans, the State of Louisiana and the 
Federal Government, all of our agencies, if they had all performed at 
their maximum statutory authority, we still didn't have the resources 
and we didn't have the mechanism in place to save everybody, and as 
many resources as possible in that disaster down in New Orleans.
  We've learned a lot from that. I'm not here to criticize FEMA or 
Small Business--they're certainly not the Corps of Engineers--and the 
balance of the Federal agencies, and certainly not to criticize the Red 
Cross. Everybody mobilized, they went to the rampart, so to speak. The 
volunteers came out in numbers to the point where sometimes they were 
actually turned away because there were more volunteers than there were 
sandbags, so to speak, in some areas. I'm proud of that. I'm proud of 
that response, and I'm proud of the work that got done and I'm proud of 
the example that got set.
  And I'm proud of the spirit of our Iowa people. And as I met with the 
business leaders and the businessmen and women in both of those cities, 
Cedar Rapids and Iowa city, as I went back to FEMA headquarters and 
stayed and spent some time--about 2.5 hours on a Sunday morning--with 
the State Disaster Coordination headquarters of FEMA, I met with many 
of their people, and even right down to a second generation FEMA 
employee. There is a lot of accumulated knowledge, a lot of disaster 
expertise within FEMA. I'm not here to criticize that.
  Madam Speaker, the issue that I raise is, downtown Cedar Rapids is 
dark. Their power is off. They've been flooded out. Six hundred to 
eight hundred businesses are out; some will not come back. Every day 
that goes by, the odds of losing another business and another business 
and another business get greater and greater.
  These businesses that have been flooded have lost a lot of their 
capital base, a lot of their assets. Some of these people have worked 
for a lifetime and put all of their resources back in their business. 
And their business was above the 100-year flood event. They didn't have 
flood insurance because that was a rational decision, not an 
irresponsible decision. And the water got 11.12 feet higher than ever 
before and they are caught by an act of God calamity of rarest 
proportions, and yet they don't have anything that they can really hang 
their hat on as to what will be the sequence of events? What resources 
will be deployed in the area?
  Yes, we know that Small Business Administration is in there offering 
loans. And I think they've done an acceptable job of processing the 
paperwork and giving people something that they can count on. They 
showed me the numbers of the loans that have been written and approved. 
And yet I know that, even though the loan is approved for people in 
residences, for example, as well as businesses, that isn't the only 
thing required to get people up and going. For example, if your 
business has been flooded and wiped out, and let's say you qualify for 
a small business loan, you still have to come up with locating the 
materials and you have to locate a contractor, and you have to put 
together a real business plan that's going to carry you on.
  I had to make some of those decisions when I was under water in 1993. 
And at that time I was in my early forties. So to look at something 
that was capitalized over 20 or 30 years was a different equation for 
me than it is today in a place like Cedar Rapids or Iowa City, where 
some of the business owners are retirement age, 63, 64, 65 years old. 
And when they're looking at a disaster that's cost them hundreds of 
thousands of dollars, and the equity that they've used to leverage 
their business through these years is gone and they're looking at a 4 
or an 8 percent loan--and by the way, the higher the risk, the higher 
the interest--a 4 to an 8 percent loan, they have to make a decision, 
when they're borrowing money, when the last payment on that 30-year 
loan is beyond their life expectancy and they've already reached about 
the end of their working life expectancy, how, then, do you pay the 
bills? What do you do with your life's work?
  When you think of the Enron people who had all their pensions wrapped 
up in Enron stock and found out that the Enron loophole allowed for the 
fraud and their pension funds collapsed, many of those people that were 
retired had to go back to work. And some of them that stayed retired 
had to dramatically shorten their budget and squeeze everything down. 
The happy golden years of retirement didn't materialize because of 
something that was beyond their control. And yet we have a situation 
here that was beyond the control especially of the business people and 
the residences, and all of the region. And I'm using Cedar Rapids as an 
example because that's where this chart is.
  Madam Speaker, I have here a picture of a residential area in Cedar 
Rapids, Iowa. And this is very, very typical. Although the report from 
FEMA is that essentially the debris removal and clean-up is caught up--
and I don't disagree with that--when they pile this

[[Page 17378]]

out in the middle of the street, they come along and pick it up and 
load it way. We don't have what I saw in Katrina, which was huge wind 
rows of debris that were piled out there. And sometimes you had people 
objecting to having the debris hauled out. That's not happening in 
Iowa. When people haul debris out, they put it by the edge of the 
street, sometimes right in the edge of the street so it's easy to pick 
up. It's being picked up and removed.
  I saw the city of Palo was entirely under water. Every house in that 
city had suffered major damage. And they carried their furniture and 
their appliances and the ruined material on out into the street and 
began to strip out the wet drywall--which is now a common phrase. And 
most of that debris is all picked up.
  This is an example of a pile waiting to be picked up. You can see it 
has furniture in here, it has appliances in here, it has some clothing 
and waste. There are pieces of lumber and boards and furniture all 
piled out here to be hauled out. And all of this, Madam Speaker, has 
got to be replaced, and it's all got to be put back again.
  And the homeowner back here doesn't know whether there is going to be 
an initiative to buy this all out, whether there will be an initiative 
to come in and rebuild, whether there is going to be a flood insurance 
premium that will be too costly and it might be wiser to move on out. 
They don't know if they can get a building permit to go in and rebuild 
their house and put it back into pre-flood conditions with or without a 
loan, with or without a buyout, with or without a city plan, they don't 
know.
  And the hardest part of being in a flood--and it isn't easy to answer 
all these questions--the hardest part is you can't make decisions 
because there are so many variables that are beyond the scope of being 
answered or can be answered by the local officials. But that's an 
example of the debris that's there last Saturday.
  This is a relatively fresh picture. This is an example of the spirit 
of America and the spirit of Iowans. This is in Cedar Rapids. These 
buildings are all empty, they're all flooded. The high water line I'm 
going to guess is someplace about right here.

                              {time}  2245

  The defiance of America shows up this way, Madam Speaker. That is, 
you go find the largest, boldest American flag that you can find and 
you hang it up there for all to see, and that says, We're going to beat 
this. We are coming back. We're not going to let this get us down. That 
is what that flag said.
  If you look up this street off in this direction, there was flag 
after flag coming out from the buildings that were set up. That is the 
message that I am proud of. But these buildings are stripped empty now. 
They have been flooded out. They have all got to come back again. These 
are businesses that probably don't get a grant of any kind. They will 
have to settle for a loan, if they can qualify. And then for 30 years 
they can pay it back.
  This also, Madam Speaker, is another example of along the street in 
Cedar Rapids. Again, Cedar Rapids is just the epicenter. This goes up 
and down the river valley, town after town.
  You can see the appliances that are laid out here and the debris that 
has been stripped out of the homes right along the street so it's easy 
to pick up. Nobody is resisting here like they did in New Orleans and 
taking the position that the workers, the volunteers, and the cleanup 
crews shouldn't set foot on this ground. They are saying, I put it out 
here for you to pick it up. Please do so. Thanks for helping me. Let's 
all get to work.
  We have some people that don't know whether they are going to have 
enough money to fix their house or not, but they want to do something. 
So they go in there and they strip it out, they clean everything out, 
they throw everything away that they can throw away, that they need to 
throw away, and fix that house so that they can start rebuilding if 
they come up with the money, if they get a grant, if they get a loan, 
and if they can come up with the materials and the contractor.
  But that looks to me like New Orleans looked. I spent a lot of time 
walking the streets in New Orleans. If I would take this picture and 
ask the question of our friends from Louisiana, I think a lot of them 
would say, Oh, yeah, I saw that down south. I saw that along the gulf 
coast in 2005. Well, it's 2008. It's Iowa. They are still looking for 
some answers and looking for some relief.
  This also is an example of what we saw for the disaster. This is a 
bridge that was taken down. They knew that the bridge was going to take 
a lot of water so they ran train cars out here, filled these train cars 
with stone and ballast, and I believe they said water, to put some 
weight on the bridge so the bridge wouldn't go out. The bridge went out 
anyway.
  Here's the train cars still sitting on the bridge. This is a little 
bit older picture. Some of these are actually floating homes that were 
pushed down up against this bridge. I saw this all from the air when I 
flew over Cedar Rapids.
  So that is an idea of how devastating this was when you see this kind 
of carnage with a railroad bridge taken out and the homes that are 
floated down against it.
  This, City Central, this is an island in the middle of the Cedar 
River, where city hall and some administrative buildings are. This is 
at not quite the peak high water mark, but that shows you what 
happened.
  We have, Madam Speaker, a grant system that comes primarily from FEMA 
that does this. It allows for residences to qualify. So a residence 
like this potentially could qualify for up to a $28,800 grant. That 
grant then can be used to refurbish and rebuild the interior of the 
home and put it back in its pre-flood condition. That is there for the 
residential homeowner.
  We also have qualified grants to help the city out. Political 
subdivisions, say the city, the county, perhaps the State, and I 
believe the State, so that if they have damage to their buildings, they 
will be rebuilt. We have a Federal building that was flooded, the 
Federal courthouse in Cedar Rapids. It's slated for reconstruction, to 
be built new, but I do believe that it's going to be refurbished before 
we can get a new building built. That's a pretty big check to replace 
the building. It's also a big check to refurbish the building.
  But my point is that political subdivisions, the institutions of 
government, will receive Federal dollars to be reconstructed, Madam 
Speaker, and the residences will receive Federal dollars to be 
reconstructed. Even some of our critical infrastructure can qualify. 
Our railroads will likely qualify in some areas, as we have in past 
disasters seen that our utilities qualified for grants to put power 
poles back. Say in the case of an ice storm that might take the power 
out in a large area, we provided Federal dollars to go to those 
utilities, put the poles back up, the lines, and at least take some of 
the sting out for the utility companies.
  So it's not unprecedented for us to cross a line, a line from a 
residence here, a line that includes municipal government and county 
and State government here, a line that includes a railroad bridge here, 
a line that includes utilities occasionally. All of those things 
qualify for Federal grant.
  The only people that we're asking to go without any kind of a grant 
in this are the people that are paying the taxes on everything else, 
and that's the businesses in the communities. So if you run a business 
in Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, in the valleys of the Cedar or Iowa River 
or the Mississippi River Valley, likely below the confluence of the two 
rivers in Oakville, if you run a business in those areas and your 
business is flooded, chances are you're going to be applying for an SBA 
loan, if you qualify. If you're a large business, you may not.
  But there is no provision in law that allows the Federal Government 
to step in and provide a grant for the small businesses that are as 
devastated, in fact, in many cases more devastated, than the residences 
are themselves.
  I don't know that we have got this entirely backwards, Madam Speaker, 
but I will submit that if you have the healthy, economic, social, and 
cultural ecology of a community, it was the

[[Page 17379]]

evolution of that community that was formed around the commerce in the 
first place. It's likely somebody set up a trading post. Maybe that 
trading post was on the Cedar River or the Iowa River and then they 
traded furs through there and the trading post began to sell goods and 
then, after a while, services, and they built a residential house. They 
probably slept in the store when they first moved there. Then they 
built a home to live in and then they needed more services. As the 
businesses expanded, they justified the people that would be building 
more businesses around them. They needed a place to live. So they built 
homes. It wasn't that somebody moved to Cedar Rapids 150 or 180 years 
ago and decided that they just wanted to live there like a vacation 
home, Madam Speaker. It was the first people that built the towns and 
the cities in the Midwest at least and in the United States, for that 
matter, they set up the businesses first and the residences came next. 
Then they had to have government to provide order and the government 
buildings were built.
  Sometimes it was the transportation links like the railroads that 
caused the towns to be built along them, especially at the 
intersections of the railroads, and where we had the intersections of 
the rivers, which were the flow of commerce back in the day. All of 
this was surrounded and came together because somebody went out there 
and established a business because there was an opportunity to make 
some profit. The residences were built around the businesses.
  And so we have our priorities in a condition where they need to be 
rearranged. Our priorities, I believe, should be this. Recognize that 
the source of the taxes are the businesses that earn the wealth and pay 
the taxes and hire the workers to pay the wages so that people can 
afford to live in the houses that they live in.
  So we here in our government response to disasters of, let me say, 
epic proportions, help out the residences and the railroad and the 
political subdivisions but not the businesses.
  I have legislation I have introduced in the Congress this week, Madam 
Speaker, and the number of the legislation escapes my memory for the 
moment, but what it does, it goes in and amends the Stafford Act. The 
Stafford Act is the language that allows FEMA to provide grants to 
residences and this allows businesses with 25 or fewer employees to 
qualify for disaster relief grants in the same fashion, on up to the 
$28,800 limit that is there today in statute for residences.
  This, I think, is a change that is a long time coming. It's been 
endorsed by all of the Iowa House delegation. We are asking to go out 
then to the Representatives from the other States that are affected by 
this flood, asking them to sign on as well. The idea being this: Small 
businesses can perhaps be put back on their feet very quickly if their 
damage is such that a limited grant, and I know for some of these 
businesses, it won't amount to a lot, and some will turn up their nose 
and say, You're not really helping me enough. But it's something and 
it's what we can do. It may in fact be all we can do. I don't think 
that it's more than we can do. But, for me, if we are going to justify 
grants to residences and grants to railroads and municipalities, then I 
don't know how we say no to the businesses that are funding it all and 
the reason for it all in the first place.
  So what is the point in fixing up homes and providing residences for 
people that won't have jobs in the businesses that are closed? Why is 
Cedar Rapids dark? Why is there not a plan, a plan that they can at 
least count on, and if the answer is no, then it's no, and they can 
make their plans accordingly.
  But right now, under the current statute that we have, the answer is, 
well, maybe. And there will be some decisions made later. The city will 
work in cooperation with the county, with the State, who will work in 
cooperation with the Federal Government. I endorse all of that. The 
working groups that have been put together look to me like they are 
good people, working in a good cause, but we still don't have the 
definitive response.
  So I am encouraging this, the adoption of the language to amend the 
Stafford Act so that small businesses with 25 or fewer employees 
qualify for grant relief in the same fashion that residences do, up to 
$28,800, and that can be enough to keep a business open, it can be 
enough to refurbish the inside of the businesses.
  I walked into a number of them on Saturday. Some are under 
reconstruction and some are just sitting there. Some have been stripped 
out but they don't have a plan to put it back together. That is what we 
are working with, Madam Speaker.
  We have got to move on this. If Speaker Pelosi is not willing to move 
the tax relief package that is drafted and introduced by Senator 
Grassley and endorsed by Senator Harkin, the package that was good 
enough for Katrina and Rita, it should be good enough for Iowa floods, 
Madam Speaker.
  This $123.5 billion that flowed through to Katrina relief, we are 
looking right now at $2.65 billion for the Midwest flood relief, which 
includes a number of States, including parts Minnesota, Wisconsin, 
Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas. Those States come to mind right away.
  We have got to move some relief, and this Congress is ready to 
adjourn for August, the August break, by late Thursday night or 
sometime on Friday. We will go home for 6 weeks and during that entire 
6 weeks that this Congress doesn't at least send a signal that we are 
willing to step up and help the people that are in distress, then if we 
do not do that, we have failed them. They need a definitive response 
from this Congress. You have to be able to plan on something.
  I believe that the people have performed well in Iowa. One of the 
things that they said was that they just went out and worked. They 
didn't ask for anything. I have talked to the FEMA people that have 
been around the country in these disasters for a career--and they were 
constantly complimentary of the way Iowans have responded to this. I 
hear anecdotes about Iowans that will say, Yes, I could use some 
relief, but don't stop and help me because my neighbor needs it worse 
than I do. Go help my neighbor.
  It's been neighbor helping neighbor. What has been missing here is 
not volunteers, not good cheer, because there is a smile on their face 
in a lot of the cases no matter how the dire circumstances are, no 
matter how much adrenaline has drained off, and no matter how much they 
look through that tunnel looking for the light at the other end. No 
matter how much that is, their spirit has been strong.
  But the joke came up, Well, we didn't have any protesters, we didn't 
have any looters, and we didn't have much media. So if we'd had 
protester, looters, and media, maybe we would have had some of this 
legislation moved by now. Maybe Speaker Pelosi would have had a little 
more sensitivity. But these polite and quiet people, these respectful 
people, these salt-of-the-earth people, as Congressman Loebsack 
referenced earlier tonight, haven't been beating the drum, they haven't 
been demanding relief. They have just been doing their work and pulling 
their end together.

                              {time}  2300

  It reminds me, Madam Speaker, of our debate on the Medicare 
reimbursement language that we fought through here in this Congress 
back in I believe it was 2003, perhaps 2004. When one calculates the 
relief, or the funding for Medicare patients, the per-patient funding 
for Iowa was last in the Nation. Medicare reimbursements, last in the 
Nation. Of the 50 States, Iowa ranks 50th. Before we passed that 
legislation, Iowa ranked 50th, and it was a long ways up to 49th. It is 
more than a coincidence that Louisiana ranks first. They ranked first 
then. We passed the reform relief, and they ranked first afterwards.
  So the analysis goes this way. Back in the seventies, when Richard 
Nixon imposed a wage and price freeze, Iowa health care providers 
honored that wage and price freeze, so they didn't give increases in 
wages. They lost some

[[Page 17380]]

people to other States that didn't respect that and gave wages anyway, 
but Iowa respected that.
  There is another situation. That is Iowans don't use health care 
services with the frequency and regularity that they do in Louisiana, 
for example. So, historically, at least, Louisiana didn't honor the 
wage and price freeze imposed by President Nixon, and they utilized the 
medical services more regularly than those in Iowa.
  So the formulas that were put in place that were based upon frequency 
of usage and cost reflected the two things: More wages were being paid 
in Louisiana than Iowa because they didn't freeze their wages, and they 
used the health care services more. Those two indicators, multiplied 
over the years from back in the early seventies to today, where the 
reimbursement rates in Louisiana were far higher, highest in the 
Nation, and Iowa, lowest in the Nation. We were 50th, and a long ways 
up to 49th. We have made some marginal improvements in that. We are 
still 50th, it is just not so far up to 49th.
  But what happened is Iowans not using health care services is similar 
to Iowans not demanding services from this Federal Government. It was 
said by the former chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, here is 
how it works: Iowans will not go to the doctor or the hospital 
sometimes when they need to. Sometimes they will stay home and die in 
bed instead. So they aren't running up health care costs, because they 
are independent and want to be self-reliant and take care of 
themselves. But that former chairman of the Ways and Means Committee 
said, but Louisianans are a little different. They will wake up in the 
morning and feel good and go to the doctor and ask them why.
  Well, if those two things are right, and they are just used to 
describe the stark differences and not meant to be a particular 
representation of the people in either State, because we know there are 
outstanding people in all States, that is the kind of people though 
that we have here in Iowa right now that have been underwater and seen 
floods of epic proportions; the kind of people that will stay home and 
die in bed; the kind of people that won't go to the streets and 
demonstrate; the kind of people that aren't criticizing the Federal, 
State, county or city government for not doing enough. They are not 
criticizing their Governor or Members of Congress or their Senators. 
They are not criticizing FEMA in an intense, significant way. They are 
saying, just give me some answers so I can plan, and I will do what I 
have to do. And if I have lost my entire life's work and all I have 
left is a chance to go on Social Security, I am going to figure out how 
to adjust to that. But give me some real answers.
  I think this Congress needs to give some real answers, and I think we 
need to expand the Stafford Act to include small businesses so they 
qualify for grants in the same fashion that residences do. And if we 
can't do that, I don't know how I can justify the grants that go to the 
residences.
  The businesses are essential in the entire economic ecosystem of the 
communities, because if it weren't for the businesses, the residences 
wouldn't be there. If it weren't for the businesses, the railroad 
wouldn't need to be there. If it weren't for the businesses, there 
won't be anything there.
  Nobody is going to go out and move out in the countryside and just 
live there and live on the land, because, sooner or later, somebody has 
to start a business. They are the key, and they are the source of at 
least 80 percent of the new employment in America. We need to get them 
on their feet quickly.
  One of the smart people in the meeting on Saturday is a city council 
member who is also a CPA who said, these businesses that have taken the 
flood losses have been kicked into a business startup mode. The risk of 
failure in a new business startup is significantly greater than it is 
in a business that is established. Even though these businesses were 
established, for the most part they have lost so much capital and they 
have got such a deep hole to come back out of, they are essentially 
startup businesses.
  So they don't need to have a 30 year liability. That doesn't help 
their cash flow. And, by the way, these losses that they have are 
losses that aren't going to be funded. It isn't like a new investment 
that you put in when you go in and replace the floor and the furnishing 
and appliances and the walls and the wiring in your business, and the 
inventory. It isn't like you have added on to a production line and you 
kick up your gross receipts and help your bottom line. This is a great 
big hole that has to be filled in the equity that has been created 
often through a lifetime of work. That is what is up.
  I am asking the leadership in this Congress to quickly go to work 
with us, and let's get the tax package passed that all of the Members 
of the Iowa delegation in the House and Senate support. Let's get some 
relief there. Let's provide some grant money for the businesses that 
all the members of the Iowa delegation in the House of Representatives 
support, the amendment of the Stafford Act. Let's send a message from 
this Congress that there is hope to the people that live in the city 
that has seen more water than ever before, a city that is 
indistinguishable from New Orleans at the peak of the recovery of its 
disaster, a city that is the second largest city in the State of Iowa, 
as an example, which represents the cities up and down those valleys of 
the Cedar, the Iowa, the Turkey River and others, and along the 
Mississippi River Valley.
  All this needs to be done by this Congress. When one goes and looks 
at the example of the appropriations that have taken place to try to 
lift the people in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, along the Gulf 
Coast and parts of Texas out of their Katrina and Rita disasters, we 
can do the same for people in the Midwest. Not just Iowa, Madam 
Speaker, but also across the river, up the river and down the river. We 
need to do the right thing.
  Once we cross the line and make the commitment, we need to do a 
balanced commitment and help these businesses out, as well as the 
residences. And it needs to be a definitive response, a response that 
they can count on, and one that build their future on.
  That is what I am asking of this Congress. That is what I am asking 
of our leadership. And I am asking for the cooperation across the aisle 
between the Democrats and the Republicans. I am going to ask my 
colleagues in this Congress to come down to this floor and raise this 
issue and join me in the next opportunity we have to do a special order 
together.
  That, Madam Speaker, concludes this subject matter. I believe that 
being this close to our adjournment time, I am going to just fit in one 
more subject quickly for the matter of information purposes for the 
Congressional Record.
  It is something that is continually distorted on the floor as we have 
these energy debates. The statement is consistently made, why would you 
drill in ANWR? It will take 10 years to get any oil out of ANWR. Then 
that moves up to 15 years, and then 20 years I heard last week; 20 
years to get oil out of ANWR.
  Well, we passed ANWR legislation out this House not that long ago, I 
am going to say not 20 years ago, but about 4 or 5 years ago. Had that 
made it to the President's desk, instead of having been filibustered in 
the Senate by the same party that opposes energy expansion in this 
Congress, we would have oil coming out of ANWR today.
  I was signed up to go up to Alaska to open up the oil fields in the 
North Slope of Alaska. I was signed up to do that in 1970, and as I 
prepared to go up there, there was a court injunction that was filed. 
That court injunction in 1970 froze the development of the Alaska North 
Slope oil fields, and as it froze that development, there was no 
development that took place. It took until 1973 to open up those oil 
fields. I actually reported that to be 1972. I was operating from 
memory. It was actually 1973. I went back to get some of those records, 
and here is what I find.
  The court injunction stopped the development of the Alaska pipelines 
in 1970, and it froze that development with an injunction that 
prohibited their development until 1973.

[[Page 17381]]

  In 1973, the Congressman for Alaska, who is here in this Congress 
still, Congressman Don Young, introduced legislation, because the 
environmentalists had successfully blocked access to a massive supply 
of crude oil that this country needed. Mdand this legislation was 
introduced and became law, and I see the date here, and I believe this 
is the date that it was enacted, but I am not certain, and it is 
November 16, 1973, when legislation was passed to open up Alaska for 
oil, and it reads like this. There had to be legislation that blocked 
all of the litigation, all the environmentalist, extremist lawsuits, 
and allowed for the development of the oil fields.
  It says in this piece of legislation, Public Law 95-153, November 16, 
1973, Section 203(a): ``The purpose of this title is to ensure that, 
because of the extensive governmental studies already made of this 
project and the national interest in early delivery of North Slope oil 
to domestic markets, the trans-Alaska oil pipeline be constructed 
promptly without further administrative or judicial delay or 
impediment. To accomplish this purpose, it is the intent of the 
Congress to exercise its constitutional powers to the fullest extent in 
the authorizations and directions herein made and in limiting judicial 
review of the actions taken pursuant thereto.''
  In other words, Article III, Section 2, court stripping said you 
don't have any jurisdiction to hear any cases that are going to block 
the development of the North Slope of Alaska, the right-of-way roadway 
to go from Fairbanks north up to there, nor the about 850 miles of 
pipeline that was built from milepost zero up on the North Slope at 
what is known as Dead Horse access on down to Port Valdez.
  Reading again from Public Law 93-153, ``The actions taken pursuant to 
this title which relate to the construction and completion of the 
pipeline system and to the applications filed in connection therewith 
necessary to the pipelines' operation at full capacity as described in 
the final environmental impact statement of the Department of Interior 
shall be taken without further action under the National Environmental 
Policy Act of 1969.''
  Congress said enough with the litigation. We want the energy out of 
the North Slope. Environmentalists said, you will destroy the 
ecosystem. What happened? Article III, Section 2, stripping, said 
courts, you don't get to hear any more cases. This is going to go 
forward, because Congress says so.
  This Congress can say so to open up ANWR the same way, the same 
ecosystem. That is right, neighbors. It takes 74 miles of pipeline to 
be added to connect it to the 850 miles or so of Alaska pipeline that 
is there.
  This legislation, November 16, 1973, opened it up. We had to build 
the road. We had to build the pipeline. We had to drill the wells. We 
had to put the feeder tubes together. We had to get it to the terminal, 
get all of that done. And 3 years later, by our calculation, actually 
35 months later, crude oil came out of the pipeline in Valdez.
  Now, if that can happen back in 1973, with the technology we have 
today, who would believe that we can't drill ANWR, build a 74 mile 
pipeline and get that oil coming out of that pipeline at Port Valdez in 
a lot less than 10 years, and a far lot less than 20 years. I would 
submit it is easily less than 3 years.
  This Congress has vacillated on this subject matter. We can't get a 
vote out of this Speaker because they don't believe that we ought to 
have more energy in the marketplace. I believe we should. I believe 
that it is the law of supply and demand.
  We need more energy into the marketplace of all kinds. We need to 
drill ANWR; we need to drill the Outer Continental Shelf; we need to 
drill the non-national park public lands; we need to open up the 
natural gas, the vast supplies we have, about 420 trillion cubic feet 
on the Outer Continental Shelf; we need clean burning coal, and lots of 
it; and we need to take the oil out of the coal shale in the heart of 
the west, in the Rockies.
  We need more nuclear, and this Congress blocked access to another 
location for uranium, the last place that I know we can go to. We need 
to expand our nuclear. And, yes, we need wind and we need solar and 
geothermal. Those are the only three sources that were not met with 
vigorous opposition. But those three sources altogether, wind, solar 
and geothermal, only comprise 0.74 of 1 percent of the overall energy 
consumption in the United States. My friends on this side of the aisle, 
that really don't have a plan except to shut down access to energy, 
would want to take those three little pieces and expand them into 100 
percent of the new energy supply for the United States and then say, 
well, we want to be energy independent.
  Now, how are you going to do that? It is not possible to do so, 
unless we expand and grow the size of the energy pie, produce more of 
every kind of energy that we use, in an environmentally safe fashion, 
add another piece to the pie called energy conservation, and take that 
72 percent of the energy that we are consuming, 72 percent of the 
energy we are consuming is the energy that we are producing, we need to 
expand the 72 percent to 100 percent to be energy independent.
  We can do it. We must believe. We must do it in all ways, and we need 
to act now before it is too late and our wealth is transferred overseas 
to the Middle East, to people that don't like us all that much.
  Madam Speaker, I thank you for your indulgence and the privilege, and 
I yield back the balance of my time.

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