[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 13226-13227]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF HURRICANE KATRINA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Graves) is 
recognized for the remainder of the hour as the designee of the 
majority leader.
  Mr. GRAVES of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, 10 years ago, nearly 10 years 
ago, the scenes flashing across our television screens showed what 
appeared to be a Third World country--literally bodies floating in the 
streets, people that were homeless, homes washed away--one of the worst 
natural disasters in America's history.
  Mr. Speaker, over 1,200 of our brothers, our sisters, our mothers, 
fathers, uncles, aunts, our neighbors, our friends perished in the 
disaster on August 29, 2005. We lost over 1,200 people, Mr. Speaker.
  These vulnerabilities were not vulnerabilities that were unknown. As 
a matter of fact, Mark Schleifstein with The Times-Picayune published a 
series known as ``Washing Away'' in 2002, years before Hurricane 
Katrina hit our State and caused all this devastation.
  That series accurately predicted, the vulnerabilities accurately 
predicted the outcomes of a direct hit by a storm like Hurricane 
Katrina upon our communities. We saw what had happened. Homes, 
businesses, monuments, schools, our history, our dreams, our hopes, our 
future were all flooded as a result of Hurricane Katrina 10 years ago.
  Mr. Speaker, this wasn't a Third World country; it was one of 
America's great cities that was underwater. Many people look back at 
Hurricane Katrina, and they view the impacts as being parochial, things 
that impacted Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama, not something that 
impacted the Nation.
  Mr. Speaker, nothing could be further from the truth. When the 
Mississippi River was shut down and all the ports associated with it 
across the Gulf Coast as a result of the devastating impacts, the 
farmers in the Midwest had no way of getting their crops out to market. 
There was no capacity within other transportation mediums to get these 
crops out; therefore, the farmers in the Midwest suffered as a result 
of Hurricane Katrina's impacts on the Gulf Coast.
  Mr. Speaker, rail lines, Louisiana is only one of two places in the 
United States where we have all six class I rail lines. In many cases, 
the rail lines and the associated infrastructure was destroyed, 
therefore, once again, severely impacting America's intermodal 
transportation system.
  The economy, one of the places that has these amazing natural 
resources, has an amazing energy industry, petrochemical industry, 
agriculture industry, and many, many others, severely impacted, causing 
impacts not just again to the regional economy, but to the national 
economy.
  Mr. Speaker, one great example of that is gasoline prices. Following 
Hurricane Katrina, we watched gasoline

[[Page 13227]]

prices spike 75 cents a gallon; but let me be clear, not in Louisiana, 
nationwide--75 cents a gallon is the national average price increase as 
a result of those 2005 hurricanes on the Gulf Coast--75 cents a gallon.
  As I recall, I believe that translates into $450 million in higher 
consumer payments per day as a result of the impacts those storms had, 
the 2005 hurricanes--Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita--had on the 
Gulf Coast and had on, really, the Nation.
  Importantly, Mr. Speaker, the deficit, much of the recovery that was 
funded by the Federal Government, in fact, the far majority of it, was 
funded by deficit spending, funded by deficit spending. This wasn't 
spending that was offset; this wasn't reserve dollars that the Federal 
Government had sitting there waiting for this unbelievable disaster. 
This was deficit spending.
  Our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren will be 
paying for decades for this. I want to be clear, Mr. Speaker, this was 
preventable, which I am going to talk about in a minute.
  Also the impact to the environment, here you see the U.S. Army Corps 
of Engineers, and you see the EPA out there talking about the 
importance of wetlands and the importance of waters of the United 
States and writing all of these extraordinary rules to grant themselves 
more aggressive jurisdiction, larger jurisdiction over our private 
lands; yet as a result of those storms alone in 2005, we lost over 200 
square miles of coastal wetlands in the State of Louisiana alone.
  Mr. Speaker, I am going to say again, a lot of people looked at this 
and watched it on TV and saw it as being a parochial problem, a problem 
of the Gulf Coast, a problem of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
  Mr. Speaker, you could cut and paste that situation; you could paste 
virtually any other coastal city, any other coastal State in this 
Nation, and they potentially could face the same repercussions, the 
same outcomes as we experienced in 2005 because this Nation continues 
to have a reactive policy to disasters, and it is something that we 
have got to change.
  We could have taken the hundred-plus billion dollars that Congress 
appropriated following the 2005 hurricanes to help recover, to help get 
these communities back on their feet across the Gulf Coast. We could 
have taken a fraction of those dollars, and we could have invested it 
proactively and prevented it from happening.
  Mr. Speaker, any city on our coast could experience the same disaster 
we saw; and I remind you, just in 2012, we saw Hurricane Sandy cause 
profound consequences in New York, New Jersey, and other communities on 
the East Coast. I will say it once again, disasters that were 
preventable, and so this is something that we all need to be paying 
attention to.
  While in New Orleans, while in south Louisiana and Mississippi and in 
Alabama, there were amazing stories of communities coming together, of 
people coming together, of resilient families coming together to ensure 
that while this did knock them down, they were getting back up again, 
and they were going to recover--strong resolve from these communities 
all across the Gulf Coast.
  Mr. Speaker, one other thing that was truly amazing is watching the 
incredible outpouring of support not just from the Gulf Coast, but from 
all over this Nation and countries around the world, committing to come 
help us recover across the Gulf Coast.
  It was an amazing opportunity for people to come together, to put 
down differences, and to all come together in support of the recovery 
of these communities, the recovery of these families, the recovery of 
these businesses, the recovery of the hopes and dreams of these 
communities across the Gulf Coast.
  Mr. Speaker, we are going to continue to see this play over and over 
again. We are going to continue to see these types of disasters over 
and over again until we turn the policies around in the United States, 
until we see fundamental changes.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to pivot back to the recovery; I want to pivot 
back to New Orleans; I want to pivot back to Plaquemines Parish and St. 
Bernard, St. Tammany; I want to pivot back to lower Jefferson Parish. 
These communities, in many cases, were destroyed.
  Everything was underwater, everything. I will say it again, the 
homes, the businesses, the schools, the hopes, the dreams, the future 
underwater--and 10 years ago, 10 years ago, unbelievable. I think that 
most people would have told you these communities aren't coming back; 
they can't come back. They have been so profoundly impacted that they 
simply can't recover from this, but that is not what happened.
  As you just heard Mr. Scalise discuss, people came together. We now 
have an amazing progress, amazing recovery of our schools in south 
Louisiana, amazing recovery in our economy.
  As a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, we now have tens of billions of 
dollars in economic development projects on the horizon while, in other 
areas, you are seeing people losing jobs, you are seeing businesses 
close, you are seeing small businesses shut down and a trend of more 
small businesses closing and opening across the Nation; but in 
Louisiana, Mr. Speaker, tens of billions of dollars in new economic 
development projects on the horizon.
  As a matter of fact, we have the largest foreign investment in U.S. 
history committed to projects in south Louisiana. We are seeing a 
manufacturing renaissance, and it is happening because our people are 
so resilient because we have come back, because we have come together, 
and because we have plotted a path to the future using the resources 
that Louisiana is so blessed with, the Louisiana maritime 
transportation system that we have, and the amazing natural resources 
in regard to the inexpensive, readily available natural gas, oil, 
petrochemical industry, the rail lines, the intermodal transportation 
facilities.
  We have been able to accomplish a manufacturing renaissance not in 
Mexico, not in Asia, but right here in the United States in south 
Louisiana.
  Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to say I pray that there is not 
another community, that there is not another city, that there is not 
another State in this Nation that has to experience, that has to go 
through the tragedy, the travesty that we experienced in south 
Louisiana, the loss of over 1,200 of our friends, our relatives, and 
our neighbors, to see the type of recovery, to see people come 
together.
  To see us finally help to build a resilient protection system, 
resilient ecosystem to ensure that the next storm isn't going to cause 
the same devastation to New Orleans as we saw 10 years ago, I pray, Mr. 
Speaker, that that doesn't have to happen again.
  The only way we prevent it from happening again is if people learn 
from the lessons of Hurricane Katrina, from Hurricane Rita, if they 
actually apply the lessons learned that we so painfully went through in 
south Louisiana, in Mississippi, and in Alabama, that we apply those 
lessons around the United States to make our communities more 
resilient; to make our economy more resilient; to make our businesses 
more resilient; to make our families more resilient; and, Mr. Speaker, 
most importantly, to ensure that we can all accomplish the American 
Dream.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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