[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Pages 21687-21689]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     FLOOD DEVASTATION IN LOUISIANA

  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I know that throughout the Capitol, even 
at this relatively late hour, there are many meetings going on as 
Senators and members of the administration and House Members and 
leadership and rank-and-file struggle with how to address some of the 
major challenges before our Nation, both domestically and 
internationally.
  Of course, Mr. President, you are aware that while all of these 
issues are going on, for those of us in the South, we have a special 
mission, if you will, and our attention has been drawn in the last few 
weeks to the terrible devastation that has occurred not just in 
Louisiana, not just in parts of Mississippi, not just in Arkansas, but, 
of course, in Texas as well, where not one storm, not really two, but, 
Mr. President, as you are aware, three pretty major hurricanes, 
starting with Fay, came through Florida with drenching rain, rain, 
rain, and not just in the State of Florida because as that storm moved 
its way up through the central part of our State, it flooded vast areas 
of the central part of our country.
  Then, as people were drying out and cleaning up from the wreckage of 
these storms, with levees overflowing, creeks rising, farmers 
struggling, and communities trying to keep dry, lo and behold, here 
comes Gustav into the gulf, skipping Florida this time, no direct hit--
although you have been hit so many times in the last few years--but 
slamming right into the coast of Louisiana, as ironic as it would seem, 
literally almost to the day of the third anniversary of Katrina, which 
was the worst catastrophe. And we say natural disaster, but actually it 
was a manmade catastrophe because had the levees that we made held, the 
city would not have gone underwater, or the region. So it was both a 
natural and manmade disaster. On the third anniversary, Gustav comes 
through, with its great tidal surge in south Louisiana. It caught part 
of Mississippi, as well as a little bit of Texas, but it swept through 
all 64 parishes in Louisiana with hurricane-force winds.
  Now, this is not usual for us. We usually have terrible storms, such 
as Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, without the levee breaks, where the 
damage is localized to the southern part of our State. But not Gustav. 
Gustav came through as a category III and then II, and then the winds 
moved through our entire State. Louisiana was in that path.
  Just as we were catching our breath and the lights were starting to 
come back on after weeks, Ike comes roaring in--yes, directly into 
Galveston and into that path of Houston, but, as you know, the eastern 
bands are the worst, and to the east of Galveston and to the east of 
Beaumont, lo and behold, lies southwest Louisiana and coastal Louisiana 
yet again.
  I tell my family that I feel as if--not just for me but the people I 
represent--we are living literally the chapters of Job, I mean for the 
last several years, just suffering after suffering after suffering.
  This Congress has been very good, particularly the leadership now, to 
step up. Even at times when, in my view, the administration turned a 
cold shoulder for whatever reason, this Congress stepped up and did 
yeoman's work, basically pushing forward on 100 percent reimbursement 
when we needed it and, when there was some reluctance to do so at the 
administration level, giving us more community development block 
grants, and I could go on and on. We are very grateful.
  But I had to come to the floor today, Mr. President, to speak again 
on behalf of the 64 parishes in Louisiana and the southern part of our 
State. Senators, of course, will speak for their own States,

[[Page 21688]]

but I am well aware, having been in conversations with Senator 
Hutchison of Texas earlier today and Senator Blanche Lincoln from 
Arkansas and other Senators, that the southern part of our State, 
particularly when it comes to our rural areas and to agriculture, is 
currently being overlooked, and I am here today to call attention to 
this fact and to try to lay out some data for the record in hopes that 
sometime before we leave here we might make a few corrections to this 
situation because it would be tragic and devastating to not just 
hundreds but thousands of families in these rural areas.
  Right now, as I speak, people in these areas are looking out at their 
fields and seeing complete and total destruction. These storms hit not 
at planting time, not in the middle of the season, but at harvest time, 
and because the Fay rains delayed the harvest--and, of course, you know 
how our crops are harvested, Mr. President. You can't harvest crops in 
the middle of torrential downpours, so the farmers who were ready 
waited. We had beautiful crops in the field. We had soybean that looked 
beautiful. We had cotton. Our sweet potato crop looked promising. We 
are growing a lot more corn. In Louisiana, we grow it all. We are not a 
State that grows just one crop. We have vegetables, but primarily it is 
cotton, soybean, rice, and now our sweet potatoes are growing in many 
more places, not just south Louisiana. So our farmers were literally 
giddy with excitement. Only 4 months ago, we were thinking we were 
going to have a Record, a banner agricultural year.
  I am sure people were making plans for expansion and new investments 
and perhaps even acquiring new land or expanding their lease 
arrangements. Literally within a matter of 90 days, the world turned 
upside down. The world seems to be turning upside down right now in 
another sector, in the financial markets. As that world is turning 
upside down, this Congress is turning with it and all attention right 
now is focused on Wall Street and financiers and the lack of credit in 
New York, on the east coast to the west coast. But I am here to tell 
you there is a credit crunch, a credit crisis right now in the 
heartland and nobody is talking much about this.
  We have a $700 billion bailout bill under consideration. I have not 
heard in the last 2 weeks from anyone--from the Fed to the White House 
to many of the leadership here in Congress--about any kind of credit 
crunch happening in small towns, on Main Streets, the heartland, the 
backbone of this country when it comes to agriculture. I can tell you 
there is a lot of anxiety and a lot of fear where I come from.
  I visited some of my farms last week. I went up to northeast 
Louisiana to see for myself. I have been getting calls, hearing some 
dire reports, so I thought I better go look and see myself because I am 
sure--I don't know, but I would venture to say there hasn't been 
anybody from the U.S. Department of Agriculture up there lately. I 
thought, since I am a Senator from Louisiana, I would go up and look 
myself.
  I am going to put up some pictures here because I was so taken by 
what I saw that I had my staff blow up some photographs. This is the 
rice crop in Cheneyville, LA. Of course it is completely ruined. The 
rice is sprouting in the fields, unable to be harvested. These fields 
are not able to be drained. That is the rice crop.
  I want to show a picture of our cotton crop in north Louisiana. And I 
have a few other photos to share about sugarcane, sweet potatoes, et 
cetera. This is our cotton crop right here. Again, literally 8 weeks 
ago this was the most beautiful cotton you could see, for miles and 
miles. Louisiana, even though we talk a lot about tourism and we talk a 
lot about the port and oil and gas, we are by nature a very strong 
agricultural State. Not every State in the Union is such, but we are. 
We have thousands of acres under cultivation. This is what our cotton 
looks like. It cannot be harvested. The farmers who were desperate to 
try to get in there and harvest what they could have been turned away 
at the gin because the gin is unable to process this cotton. So we are 
going to have 100 percent losses on some farms, 50 percent losses, 45 
percent losses, at a time when the farmers have put every penny they 
had into their crop, waiting to pull it out. At that moment the rains 
came.
  When you talk about a credit crunch, I know it may be tight on the 
east coast and the west coast, but it could hardly get tighter than in 
small places that I know of in Louisiana. I am sure this is true of 
Texas and Arkansas.
  We are not asking for $700 billion. We are not even asking for $50 
billion. We are not even necessarily at this moment asking for $10 
billion. But we have to have something before we leave. We have to have 
something before we leave.
  When I saw this, I thought surely the Department of Agriculture is on 
top of this--because I have one staff person who does agriculture--one. 
The Department of Agriculture--I don't know, but I am going to put in 
the Record how many employees they might have. I am sure it is 
thousands. I am going to put into the Record the exact number. So I say 
to myself: Don't worry, Senator, there is a whole Department of 
Agriculture out there. Surely the people whose job it is to record this 
would have been down to either Louisiana or Texas or Mississippi or 
Arkansas to take pictures and maybe help declare a disaster.
  On Wednesday I had a hearing and asked the Secretary to come before 
our committee, to ask him if he has the intention of declaring a 
disaster in Louisiana. He said he was not sure. When I pressed him for 
when he might declare a disaster, he did not know. They said they are 
getting the figures in as we speak.
  I have the figures from our Commissioner of Agriculture. I am going 
to submit them for the record. But the preliminary figures that we have 
been scrambling to get in the last few weeks, from L.S.U., and from our 
research centers and extension service centers, say it is a minimum of 
a $700 million loss just in Louisiana.
  I know Texas is still struggling. The people just got back to 
Galveston yesterday. We still cannot get into Cameron Parish, which is 
the parish closest to Texas, along our border, because it is that 
devastated and flooded. We only have 10,000 people who live there, but 
it is a great farming and ranching community. Yes, I admit our numbers 
are not completely in from Cameron. But it doesn't take a month to get 
numbers from Richland Parish. It doesn't take a month to get numbers 
from Madison Parish. I suggest somebody who works for the Department of 
Agriculture might want to spend a little time looking at central and 
north Louisiana so we can get our numbers in.
  I thought not only would they do that, they would have declared a 
disaster and we would have a program to help. You know what I found out 
when I came back? We had created a program in the last farm bill--that 
is the good news. The bad news is the regulations have not yet started 
to be written.
  Let me be clear. We passed a bill. There is a new program. They have 
started very briefly to write these regulations but, according to the 
testimony I received--I am going to submit the full testimony for the 
Record--the regulations are ``not imminent.''
  I will wrap up. I ask unanimous consent for 2 more minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. The Under Secretary said--when I said, Could these 
regulations be written in 3 months? Could they be written in 6 months? 
Could they be written within the year?--Let me just say, Senator, 
``they are not imminent.''
  I said, What exactly does that mean? So our farmers have nowhere to 
ask for help?
  Well, that is about it.
  That answer is not acceptable to this Senator. If we are dealing with 
a credit crisis and can, in 5 days or 7 days, put together a $700 
billion bailout for the financiers who bet on the price of cotton and 
soybean and wheat and sweet potatoes and sugarcane, we most certainly 
can spend a few days and a few billion dollars supporting the men and 
women who actually grow it.
  That is why I am going to spend some time today, tonight, tomorrow

[[Page 21689]]

and the next day, until I hear from the leadership--the Republican 
leadership, the Democratic leadership, or from the leadership at the 
White House--about what we can possibly do to get some help to farmers 
in the middle of the country who need our attention.
  The program that will help them, the regulations have not been 
written. They can't even apply until next year. They have to go to the 
bank next week. When they go to the bank, if we don't do something 
here, the bank is going to say I can't lend you money because I can't 
get it from the elevator, the elevator can't get it from the importer 
or exporter, and it is a chain event that will result for the people 
whom we all represent--who have not borrowed one penny inappropriately, 
who were not engaged in subprime mortgages. All they do is work hard 
before the Sun comes up and as it goes down they are still working; who 
pay their bills and pay their mortgages. In their time of need this 
Congress is going to walk out without leaving a few pennies on the 
table for them? I don't think so.
  I have brought this to the attention of the Appropriations Committee 
in a letter I wrote several weeks ago. I guess the letter was not 
written strongly enough to get the attention we needed, so I am going 
to continue to speak and make phone calls and hold meetings and 
organize as best I can a group of Senators and House Members who 
represent the southern part of this country and the breadbasket of 
America, the central interior part, to say while we are bailing out the 
financial coasts, we have our energy coast, which is a whole other 
speech that I could give, underwater, our rigs are toppled, now our 
crops are down in the field down in the south, in the gulf coast, and 
we cannot even get a quorum in a meeting to take care of this.
  Let me say generally, the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Tom 
Harkin, has been very sensitive. I brought this matter to him and he 
conducted a joint hearing with me, so I thank publicly Senator Harkin. 
I thank Kay Bailey Hutchison for phone calls and meetings. I thank 
Blanche Lincoln. I am sure there will be other Senators who can 
recognize the damage done, not just to Louisiana but to their States as 
well, and recognize that the program we have, the regulations have not 
been written and it is not going to help.
  Let me also mention Senator Kent Conrad who helped design that 
program. He has said to me, and will probably speak on this, that he 
recognizes the program that has been designed is not sufficient and we 
do need special help.
  I am going to conclude by saying I will be back on the floor in the 
morning and many times throughout this weekend as we work through these 
major bills on defense, homeland security, the Wall Street bailout. But 
I am going to continue to press for some appropriate immediate relief, 
targeted and specific to the counties and to the parishes and farmers 
and farm communities that need the most help. Certainly these Americans 
who have done nothing wrong but work hard and just got caught in a 
confluence of terrible rains and bad storms can get the help they need.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 
the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sanders). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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