[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 4176]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1220
                           NOAA FUNDING CUTS

  (Ms. EDWARDS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. EDWARDS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today because I am really concerned 
about the continuing resolution we passed yesterday with over $1 
billion in cuts to one of the most important Federal agencies, NOAA. 
That's right, our weather and natural disaster folks. When some people 
think of NOAA, they think of an agency that only impacts the coastal 
States, so cuts to this agency wouldn't impact them or their families. 
But it's important to know that every time we get the day's weather so 
we can prepare and make sure we are warm or dry, we use NOAA 
technology. Every time we get alerts about tornadoes or earthquakes, 
it's NOAA's technology.
  In the wake of the tsunami that devastated Japan, the House yesterday 
passed a measure that would hamper our own ability to detect tsunamis. 
Currently, seven of the 39 Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of 
Tsunamis, DART, stations are nonoperational due to broken moorings and 
equipment failures. And the cuts that we made yesterday put us in 
jeopardy--that's right--in the Pacific Ocean, in the Atlantic, and in 
the gulf. We are all in jeopardy because of those cuts yesterday, and 
NOAA won't have an opportunity to repair them and to restore them, 
degrading the quality of our warnings.
  Mr. Speaker, this is senseless, and it's time for the American people 
to speak up against this senseless policy.

                          ____________________