[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 7495-7497]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            FEMA RECOUPMENT

  Mr. PRYOR. I rise to speak for 10 minutes on an issue that is very 
important to not just my State but really important to the country.
  We know flooding is going on around the country. This is a picture 
from Arkansas, and clearly there are people all over the country or all 
over the South along the Mississippi River who are underwater. You can 
see the very end here; this little end is a lawn mower that is sticking 
up out of the water. The water is coming up to the bottom of the 
windowsill in this home over in

[[Page 7496]]

east Arkansas. So we certainly send our prayers and any sort of 
assistance we can to people in my State, in Louisiana, Mississippi, 
other places, Missouri--obviously in Missouri they have had a lot of 
water up there--and Tennessee and other places that are really 
underwater right now.
  What I want to talk about today, though, is not this flooding the 
country is experiencing right now but a flood in my State that happened 
3 years ago. We had a situation 3 years ago where we had some flooding 
on the White River near a town called Mountain View, and FEMA paid out 
some money to flood victims there. It turns out some of that money was 
paid out wrongly.
  I want to talk about that in just a minute, but let me start with 
June 1, 1865. In President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, he described 
our government as a government of the people, by the people, and for 
the people. I like President Lincoln's description of our government, 
and I firmly believe our government was created by our citizens to 
protect our citizens. It is there for the benefit of our citizens. That 
is what I want to talk about today.
  Many of you have heard me talk about FEMA's disaster assistance 
recoupment process, which, by the way, I am 100 percent for recoupment. 
Our Federal agencies make mistakes, and they send out things in error. 
There is some double-dipping. There is some lack of oversight. There 
are poor systems in place from time to time. There is some fraud, some 
dishonesty out there. I think the Federal Government owes it to the 
taxpayers to go out and recoup as much of that money as possible. I 
want to focus on one sliver of that, and even within that sliver, a 
very small piece of that small sliver; that is, FEMA's disaster 
assistance recoupment process.
  I have a bill on this subject, and since the last time I have spoken 
about this on the floor, we have taken our bill, we have been in the 
Homeland Security Committee, and it has been reworked and modified. Our 
staff and many other staffs on the committee worked on this late last 
week and over the weekend and early this week, and I think they spent 
over an hour with FEMA on the telephone to make sure they understand 
all of FEMA's processes and how this really works.
  But the bottom line is, yesterday in Homeland Security, I was able to 
offer my new substitute bill, which was adopted in the committee, the 
substitute was adopted--the amendments were adopted to the bill. So we 
now have a new bill in terms of the text of the bill. The changes were 
negotiated. Again, we spent a lot of time talking to staff and Members 
from both sides of the aisle, both sides of the committee.
  Basically what it does is very simple, and it is much simpler than 
what we were doing a week ago. It is very simple. What our bill does is 
it gives the FEMA Administrator the authority to waive disaster 
assistance recoupment efforts if three conditions are met. You have to 
meet all three conditions. First, the disaster assistance must have 
been distributed based solely on a FEMA error. So there can be no fault 
on the part of the person but solely on a FEMA error. Second, there 
cannot be any fraud or any misrepresentation on the part of the debtor. 
Third, the collection of the debt would be against equity and good 
conscience. And the reason we chose that phrase, ``equity and good 
conscience,'' is not because we made it up but because that is the 
standard that is in current law. The Department of Defense uses that 
language when they talk about recoupment, the Social Security 
Administration uses that language, but also OPM has that language in 
their law as well. So this is not setting a precedent; this is 
basically applying other standards, recognized standards in the Federal 
Government, to FEMA.
  The reason this is important is FEMA technically has discretion right 
now. FEMA can't tell us the statistics because they don't keep the 
statistics, but basically what we hear over and over from FEMA and 
other folks who are familiar with this process is that they cannot--or 
they are very reluctant to waive these debts. They feel they have a 
mandate to go recoup this money and collect this money, and that is 
what they do.
  Quite frankly, in some circumstances what they will do is they will 
force someone to go through this appeal process, they will make a 
determination that maybe that person may have $100 a month in 
disposable income, and they will basically take that $100 a month from 
that person every month for, say, 5 years.
  In the case in Arkansas I want to talk about here in just a moment, 
the people supposedly owe back, according to FEMA, $27,000. So if they 
did that and they took all of their disposable income--let's just say 
it is $100, and we don't know what it is because we do not know all of 
the facts. They are in the process of going through the process, but we 
don't know all of the facts. I am not trying to get in their personal 
financial information. But the bottom line is, let's say it is $100 a 
month, the disposable income. These folks are on Social Security, so 
you know it is not going to be a whole lot more than that, if that. But 
for 5 years, FEMA taxes all of their disposable income. At the end of 5 
years, FEMA has collected $6,000 on a $27,000 debt. I mean, are we 
really getting what we want out of this? Are we trying to squeeze blood 
out of a turnip?
  I have been working on this legislation for 2 months. All we are 
trying to do is give FEMA clearly in the statute some discretion to let 
them make decisions, again, when equity and good conscience would 
dictate that there ought to be a waiver. And it is not that hard.
  I know that right now in the Congress--and this is a good thing--
people are very money-conscious. That is good. We are pinching pennies. 
That is good. We are trying to recover every Federal dollar we can. 
That is good. I know the Presiding Officer right now has been leading 
the charge on that, and that is good, and we applaud her. We are 
cheering for her to continue to do that. We want her to do that. We 
want that for the government. But one of the things our government 
should do in dealing with its citizens is consider the equity and 
consider doing things in good conscience.
  I want to talk about the situation here in Arkansas. I want to talk 
about one family who has received one of these letters from FEMA. There 
are not very many. We don't know the exact number, but we know there 
are not very many who will fall under this statute we are trying to 
address.
  But in this one family, they are in their seventies. They are on 
Social Security. They bought or built this home--I am not sure which--
years and years ago on the White River near Mountain View. When they 
purchased the home, they bought flood insurance. They knew they were on 
a river. They knew it might flood. It is a river, for crying out loud. 
It is in Arkansas. It rains a lot from time to time. They knew it might 
flood, so they bought flood insurance.
  Well, after so many years, the flood insurance company said: We are 
not going to do any more flood insurance. We are not even offering that 
line anymore.
  They went to Lloyd's of London and they bought flood insurance. They 
went overseas to buy flood insurance so they would have protection. 
They carried that for a number of years. Finally, Lloyd's of London 
said: We are not doing flood insurance anymore.
  So then they tried to buy flood insurance through the National Flood 
Insurance Program. They could not do that because the county where they 
reside had not passed an ordinance that FEMA had approved. Now, I don't 
know why they had not, haven't gotten into the merits of that, but the 
bottom line is that FEMA knew this county did not pass this ordinance. 
They knew it. They had to know it because FEMA keeps it all by ZIP 
Code. They keep it all by county. They keep it all by flood zone maps. 
They knew this. Nonetheless, they show up at her house a day or two 
after the disaster, they take photos, they give her the paperwork, and 
they assure this couple--they assure them--that they are entitled to 
this money, and they walk them through the process. The people did it.

[[Page 7497]]

They got $27,000 from FEMA in this individual assistance money. Those 
people took every dime of it and put it back in their home--every dime, 
put it back in their home. They played by the rules from the very 
beginning to the very end.
  Then, 3 years later--3 years later--FEMA writes them a letter and 
says: Oh, by the way, we made a mistake. We should have never given you 
that money in the first place because your county had not passed this 
ordinance. So you owe us $27,000. You have 30 days to pay it back or 
you are going to face penalties and interest.
  Well, again, this couple is in their seventies. They are on Social 
Security. They don't have much else. They have their home. That is 
about it. This could ruin them financially--probably will ruin them 
financially. I do not know how in the world they would ever pay this, 
anywhere close to the $27,000. But nonetheless FEMA says: Look, our 
hands are tied. We have to pursue this. We have to squeeze everything 
we can get out of these folks.
  My view is that this was completely FEMA's mistake. That is why I 
opened with the quote that we are supposed to be a government of the 
people, by the people, and for the people. This doesn't sound as if 
FEMA is acting like that type of government right now. FEMA has caused 
these people harm. Our government should never harm its own people--
should never harm its own people--but that is exactly what they have 
done here. Because of FEMA's incompetence back 3 years ago, they are 
harming these people.
  These people, 3 years ago, had they known they were not eligible, had 
they known they shouldn't apply for this, had they known FEMA shouldn't 
have given them this money, would have taken a different course. They 
would have made decisions based on the circumstances they had at the 
time. Who knows if they can ever pay this money back. Who knows if they 
can ever borrow any money. Who knows how this is going to work out.
  I feel as if, if we gave FEMA the discretion in this particular case, 
you would see a different result; you would see FEMA say: OK, we will 
waive this entirely, and we are just not going to pursue you because it 
was all our fault.
  I think FEMA clearly needs to have discretion in the statute. Again, 
if you look at their regs, look at some of their law, look at their 
practices, they do technically on paper have this discretion, but 
apparently they are very reluctant to use it, and their inspector 
general is really pressuring them to collect every dime they can. So 
FEMA feels as if their hands are tied.
  Let me say a couple more words about this. I have asked the Homeland 
Security Committee to allow us to reconsider this in the committee. 
There was a little bit of an odd circumstance in the committee 
yesterday. We had the votes, but some of the Senators who were there 
and for this either had to leave or were on the way when we voted, and 
we ended up not having enough to pass it. If everyone was there, we 
would have passed this. Now we are asking them to reconsider, that we 
be allowed to bring this back up on the next markup, which I think is 
going to be next week. We would like to do that. We think it is a 
matter of fairness.
  The reason I am asking this and I am so insistent on this is because 
this is not limited to my State. I am not just trying to help a few 
people in the State of Arkansas. I think there are very few in number 
here in my State. But what is happening around the country is--I saw it 
today. There were two stories; I believe one was from Tennessee, one 
was from Mississippi. The same thing is happening in those States. 
People are starting to get these letters from FEMA. What is going to 
happen is all of my colleagues are going to start coming to the 
Homeland Security Committee, and they are going to say: Do something 
about this. We have these hardship cases in our State that need to be 
addressed.
  Trust me on this, this is going to happen for most people in this 
Chamber in their home States because FEMA has a backlog of 165,000 of 
these cases. They have only gone through a little over 5,000 of them to 
send these back--process these and send these letters out. They have 
165,000. They have done about 5,000, and they have 160,000 to go. You 
can bet your bottom dollar most Senators in this Chamber will have 
people in their home States who need a little equity, a little grace, 
and need to have their government stop beating up on them.
  Again, I feel very strongly that, in this particular case, FEMA has 
done these people harm. They have put them in a very dangerous position 
financially. They gave them some money, and now they are trying to jerk 
the rug out from under them and take it back. I think that is unfair. I 
think that once these cases--and there will not be many of them; there 
may be a couple hundred around the country--but once people get into 
these cases, they are going to want FEMA to clearly have this 
discretion. The first numbers we ran--it was only about three-tenths of 
1 percent, but now probably it may be a little higher, but we don't 
know because FEMA doesn't keep accurate statistics.
  One last thing on FEMA. I feel like FEMA has fixed this for the 
present time and going forward. When Director Fugate came in, this is 
one of the many cleanups he had to do from the previous FEMA 
administration. I think they have done that, and they have better 
systems in place. I think their competence level has gone up in the 
last couple years. I don't agree with him on everything, but I think he 
has done a pretty good job. We have asked questions of him before the 
committee. He took over an agency that was in distress, and he is 
trying. Generally, he has done a great job, and he thinks he has fixed 
this. As far as I know, he has. I think they have their act together 
much more than they did back then.
  My point is, hopefully, we will not see these kinds of cases come 
from the flooding we are seeing right now. These are legacy cases from 
the previous FEMA administration.
  I thank my colleagues for being aware of this. I ask my colleagues on 
the Homeland Security Committee to allow us to bring this back up, put 
this back on the markup, and let's get it out of the committee.
  One of the great things about Homeland Security is that very seldom 
do we have party-line votes in that committee. That committee is very 
nonpartisan. The chairman and the ranking member insist on that. When 
we sit in that committee, we actually sit around the table, Democrat, 
Republican, Democrat, Republican. It is a great committee to serve on. 
I love being on that committee. I hope my colleagues on the committee 
and also in the Chamber will encourage us to move this through the 
committee next week and try to get this done to help a lot of people 
around the country.
  With that, I yield the floor and 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. KIRK. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KIRK. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized 
as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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