[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 13383-13384]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  WRDA

  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I would like to speak about an issue 
completely separated from the international concerns we all share 
because closer to home there was an action taken today by the House of 
Representatives that has me extremely concerned as the senior Senator 
from Louisiana and a leader in our delegation and is an issue I have 
worked on literally since the first day I came to the Senate now almost 
17 years ago.
  Today, the House of Representatives, unfortunately, in presenting 
their WRDA bill, which was a bill that was negotiated at great length 
with great skill by Senator Barbara Boxer, the chair of the committee 
of jurisdiction, and the ranking member, Senator Vitter, who did an 
outstanding job for the country and for Louisiana, negotiated quite 
skillfully a bill that was very balanced.
  It contained no earmarks, as have been eliminated by the majority of 
the Congress. It did give a green light for projects that had received 
a positive Chief's report, which is the signal to go forward with the 
project for flood protection or navigation or dredging under the 
jurisdictions of the Corps of Engineers.
  Unfortunately, for unexplained public reasons today, which we will 
find out as soon as we can and report, the House of Representatives, 
the leadership, decided to drop probably the most important project in 
the bill for Louisiana, and that project is Morganza to the Gulf. The 
saddest part about all of this, the House removing this project, this 
project has already been authorized three times in the last 15 years by 
the Senate and twice by the House of Representatives.
  The people who would be benefited by this project, about 200,000 
people who live in south Louisiana, Lafourche Parish and Terrebonne 
Parish, the same area that was battered by Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Ike, 
and the oilspill, the same people who have suffered through flood after 
flood after flood, the same people who have taxed themselves, gotten 
$200 million of their own money to build phase 1, have now been told no 
by the House of Representatives.
  For what reasons I cannot understand. They have gone through all of 
the processes required. They have waited in line, a line that should 
never have been there because they were given a yes. But as the 
Presiding Officer knows, under the Corps of Engineers' rules, they can 
say yes to your project initially and then it takes so long to get to 
your project because we have a very inefficient system. If the 
estimates then come in at 20 percent over the original estimate, the 
law kicks you out and you have to start all over. So they started all 
over. That is the tragedy of this action. We were furious they had to 
start all over, but that was the law. So they did. They got a positive 
Chief's report in June.
  The House of Representatives just arbitrarily decides, even with a 
positive Chief's report, they are taking Morganza to the Gulf out of 
the bill. I am calling on the Louisiana delegation to stand, 
particularly members who are in the study committee. I think we have a 
leader of that committee, Congressman Steve Scalise, who was my partner 
in the RESTORE Act and has been a very able leader in our delegation, 
to absolutely put their foot down on this WRDA bill moving any further 
in the House of Representatives until we can get justice for this 
project.
  Our people are doing everything we can to elevate our homes, to fight 
for

[[Page 13384]]

fair flood insurance, to tax ourselves to build levees. We have 
traveled all over the world to find the best engineers in the 
Netherlands because we do not seem to have enough engineers in 
Washington who understand that you can live safely below sea level. 
Sometimes you have to because that is where the ports are. We do not 
have the luxury of living on tops of mountains. We are running the 
Mississippi River. We are not running a ski lodge in Vail. So our 
people have to live there. They are not living in mansions. They are 
not living in condos. They are living in fishing villages and fishing 
camps and in very middle-class neighborhoods, trying to make a living 
for themselves, their families, their communities and keep this country 
operating.
  We are running the biggest oil and gas operations out of Houma, LA, 
the town the House of Representatives has just literally made 
defenseless. They have no levees. New Orleans now, after Katrina, and 
Jefferson Parish, and Saint Bernard Parish have $14 billion of taxpayer 
money invested. That is a lot of money. I know some people in the 
country get very aggravated about that. Why did they get $14 billion?
  The country should have given us $1 billion 10 years ago and we could 
have saved them 14. But the Congress decided not to do that. We asked. 
We begged. We pleaded. No. No. No. No. So one day the levees broke. 
Then the bill came due. It was a big bill, $14 billion. Wait until the 
next bill comes through. In that whole timeframe, that whole timeframe 
where our people are begging, drowning, houses going underwater, 
begging for help, the government keeps telling us no, no, we sent $161 
billion to this Treasury from off our shore, from offshore oil and 
gas--$161 billion.
  We come up here and try to get $1 billion for this levee, $2 billion 
for that. We are told: We cannot afford it. I tell you, I do not have 
the power to do this. I do not. But if I did, and if I were the 
Governor, I--and I do not think he has the power--but if I could, I 
would shut down every rig in the Gulf of Mexico until this Congress 
gives the people of Louisiana the money we need to keep ourselves safe 
from drowning, from flooding.
  I would turn the lights off in Washington and in New York and in 
Maine. We are tired of it. The people in our State cannot survive 
without levees. The country cannot survive without our people living 
where we do, to run the maritime, to run the oil and gas industry. 
Houma, LA, does not deserve this. Terrebonne Parish does not deserve 
it. Lafourche Parish does not deserve it. Our delegation is not going 
to stand for it.
  So my message to the Speaker of the House and my delegation in the 
House and the House is that bill will never see the light of day unless 
Morganza is put back. I do not know who is going to do it or how they 
are going to do it.
  Please do not tell me there is not enough money. We send alone, 
Louisiana--forget Texas, forget Alabama, forget Mississippi--Louisiana 
alone every year sends about $5 billion to the Federal Treasury just 
from oil and gas severance taxes, not counting sales tax, income tax, 
property taxes, other taxes--property taxes would not come here, but 
income taxes would come here, corporate income taxes would come here. 
That is not even counting that.
  I am tired of begging for nickels and dimes. So the House of 
Representatives better put Morganza to the Gulf back into that bill. 
No. 2, I have not read the whole bill. I was just informed about it. So 
I may have to take this back off the record. But I was told also what 
they did is say: We are not going to approve projects that had a 
Chief's report after our committee meeting in June. Then they put some 
language in that says something like: No project can go forward until 
they have a committee meeting of the House of Representatives.
  So they are basically engaging in earmarks again. In other words, 
having voted to take earmarks out--I was not for that. I did not go 
along with that, but they did, the leadership of the House, take 
earmarks out. They are now trying to put earmarks back in. So the only 
way you get back in is if you go through their committee and get your 
project approved, which is earmarking in a different way.
  So on two fronts I think the House is wrong. I think they were wrong 
to take Morganza out, wrong to put this new system in.
  The third and final thing I am going to say about this, which is the 
saddest thing, because Morganza has to go back in, there are some other 
projects they might have taken out that I am simply not aware of. But I 
know that the bill that left this Senate was very fair. It was without 
earmarks. It was based on the science and the process of the Corps of 
Engineers. But to all of my friends in the Senate, even when I get 
Morganza back in there, and our delegation does, the problem for all of 
us is that there is still going to be $60 billion of authorized 
projects for all of our States. The total budget of the Corps of 
Engineers next year that Senator Feinstein chairs--and I serve on the 
appropriations committee for the Corps of Engineers--will have only 
$1.6 billion for new construction.
  The total Corps budget is only about $5 billion. So think about it. 
Is this not the silliest thing? We have $40 billion of already 
authorized WRDA projects. The WRDA bill now has $20 billion minus 
Morganza to the Gulf, which they just took out for no good reason, 
after 20 years of our people suffering. So they are going to add that 
20 plus Morganza which will get back in there. Then we are going to 
have $60 billion, and all we have is a few billion to fund it.
  It is a system that is so broken and so unfair. Every State feels 
this. It is not just Louisiana. What people hear is my strong voice, I 
hope, for the people of Louisiana. We feel it the most. We feel it most 
frequently just because of our geography. But every community in the 
country is suffering from this. We do not have enough infrastructure, 
water infrastructure. Our ports are not where they need to be. Our 
rivers are not dredged to the depths they need to be. We do not have 
enough to maintain our maritime industry in this country.
  This is undermining our economic strength and our international 
competitiveness, besides being terribly unfair to people who happen to 
live along the coast, which is 60 percent of our population. So I am 
just sending a little warning signal to the House of Representatives: 
There is no way, no way, that this WRDA bill is going to go anywhere 
without the Morganza to the Gulf in it. It is not happening. This is 
one of those sort of do or die kind of issues for the Louisiana 
delegation.
  We have waited 20 years for this project. It is justified from every 
angle, shape, form. It has been studied to death. The local people have 
put up $200 million of their own money. I am not going home to tell 
them they are not going to get the project. So I would strongly suggest 
our House delegation, particularly our leader Steve Scalise, the 
Congressman from Jefferson Parish, who is the chairman of the 
Republican study group, go have a long talk with the chairman of the 
committee and figure out how to get this project back in the bill.

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