[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 14082-14083]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, following leader remarks, the Senate will be 
in a period of morning business for an hour, Republicans will control 
the first half and the majority will control the final half. Following 
morning business, the Senate will resume consideration of H.R. 3832. 
Later today, the Senate will complete action on the GSP and TAA bill. 
There will be up to five rollcall votes in relation to amendments and 
passage of this bill. I will work with the Republican leader to set a 
time it is convenient to do that.


                                  FEMA

  More important, now that we have arrived at an agreement on how to 
move the trade adjustment assistance out of here, is what is going to 
happen in the House.
  Last week, something all too rare these days happened in this 
Chamber; we had some bipartisanship. Ten Republicans joined Democrats 
in voting to give FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the 
money they need to fund their important operations for the foreseeable 
future. The House bill would have jeopardized the Agency's ability to 
help Americans affected by tragedy to put their lives back together, 
but that is what the House did.
  What the House did last night was so wrong. We passed a bill a few 
months ago that would take care of funding for the rest of this year, 
from October 1 to October 1. Rather than doing what we had agreed upon, 
and the American people saw us work for months to agree upon, they 
reneged on that deal. They tried last night to send a continuing 
resolution for a few weeks and they attached to it--and they should not 
have attached anything to it because we had already agreed on all 
that--attached to it a very unfair FEMA funding measure.
  To show how spiteful they were--we have done great things in this 
country, doing things with modern vehicles. I had an energy summit the 
end of August in Las Vegas. They had all these electric cars lined up 
that they could show us. This is a result of money we have given here, 
taxpayers' money, to stimulate that part of our manufacturing sector. 
It has worked out great. It has been wonderful.
  As Steny Hoyer, one of the Democratic leaders in the House, said, 
what the House did is try to legislate away 53,000 jobs. They took 
money that was in the pipeline to do more of those electric cars and 
other kinds of new vehicles and stripped it away. They applied that 
toward something we have not done around here; that is, fund emergency 
situations around the country.
  To rub salt in the wound, they not only took that, 1 billion dollars' 
worth, but they took 500 million dollars' worth and they rescinded it, 
wiping out jobs, not applying it to the deficit, just

[[Page 14083]]

doing it, I guess, to show they are in control of the House. But that 
fell apart last night. It fell apart because Republicans and Democrats 
would not support that issue.
  We don't know what they are going to do over there today. All kinds 
of rumors are floating around. We don't know. I have not spoken to the 
Speaker or the majority leader over there. I haven't talked to them. 
There are all kinds of rumors as to what they might do. They might try 
to send it back to us again. But the one thing I heard loudly and 
clearly, and my colleagues have to understand, the Republicans have 
announced in the House they may be in session this weekend. I hope that 
is not the case. I have spoken to the Republican leader here. If they 
send us something, we will do our very utmost to move as quickly as we 
can on that to take action on whatever they send us.
  But I wish to send this message to them. They should not renege on 
the agreement that was legislated just a few short weeks ago; that is, 
funding government for the next year. We have agreed upon that, and 
whatever they send us, they should just send us a continuing resolution 
until we work on getting the appropriations bills done. Send us a 
continuing resolution with nothing attached to it. If they disagree 
over there with what we did--they have over on the House side our bill 
which passed in the Senate on a bipartisan basis. If they don't like 
that, send us back something else.
  We think the overwhelming support of the Nation is for something we 
did but don't tie it to the CR. That is simply not the right thing to 
do.
  We are going to be alert and wait for the House to act. We are at an 
impasse, not because of what we are doing but because of what they are 
doing, and we will wait and see what action they take. It is extremely 
important that they act as quickly as they can.
  We know we had scheduled next week to be off. We hope we can do that. 
We have an important holiday next Wednesday. That is the reason we are 
taking next week off. But I look forward to working with my colleagues 
in the Senate, both Democrats and Republicans, to move forward as 
quickly as we can.

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