[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 14490-14492]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   DEVASTATION FROM HURRICANE MATTHEW

  Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, I come to the Chamber to talk about a 
devastating event we have experienced in North Carolina. Last month, 
Hurricane Matthew skirted along the Atlantic coast, and then it plowed 
right through North Carolina with devastating results. Matthew is the 
worst storm we have experienced in almost 20 years, and it is already 
responsible for taking some 28 lives.
  Millions of people in North Carolina and across the country watched 
as the storm made landfall, but after a few days, many of them turned 
their attention back to their daily lives. I don't fault them for doing 
this because unless you are there and see it firsthand, it is easy to 
think it was just a lot of rain and a storm that came and went, but it 
is far worse than that. Thousands of adults and children will take 
years to recover from the devastation that they have experienced over 
the last month.
  The first opportunity I had to survey the damage was just 2 days 
after the hurricane made landfall. I traveled across the State in a 
helicopter with the commissioner of agriculture, and what I saw was 
remarkable. In fact, it was after the rain had occurred but before the 
floods began almost a week later.
  The next week I spent time with many of my staff working as 
volunteers down in one of the areas that was hit hard by the flood. We 
worked with the American Red Cross, the Baptist Men, and the Salvation 
Army, which were trying to prepare food and provide shelter for so many 
people who were displaced.
  I was back in the area last weekend, and I had an opportunity to 
witness firsthand the farm damage and the damage to one of our major 
areas outside of Fort Bragg, an urban area that was hit very hard. Over 
the course of the last 3 weeks, I have literally seen long stretches of 
interstate highways under water. I have seen major roads completely 
washed out. I have seen entire communities under water and a couple of 
towns that have been washed away. Some of them were washed away just 20 
years ago.
  I have seen farms that were under water for a period of time, and now 
their crops are rotting in the field. In other cases, farmers who had 
harvested their crops and prepared their land for the next planting 
season now have sand and debris on their fields.
  I have heard heartbreaking stories from victims, rescue workers, and 
volunteers. I will share some of those stories. I also heard 
heartwarming stories about the responsiveness of our local, State, and 
Federal agencies and the kindness of neighbors and volunteers.
  I wish to thank the State and local officials, FEMA, and the first 
responders, who are doing an excellent job under some of the most 
difficult circumstances.
  The death and destruction caused by Hurricane Matthew is really 
impossible to comprehend. The 28 lives we lost are a cross section of 
the State. They are parents and grandparents, sons and daughters, 
leaders of our community and young people who had their entire lives 
ahead of them. One of the victims was Charles Ivey. He was a resident 
of Lumberton, one of the areas that was hardest hit. He was a pillar of 
his community. Charles served as a deacon and Sunday school director at 
West Lumberton Baptist Church. He was an active member of the Lumberton 
Lions Club, Jaycees, Robeson County Fair Board, and West Lumberton 
Community Watch. He was the loving father of two daughters, had four 
grandchildren, and leaves behind his wife Wanda.
  Another victim who perished as a result of the storms was Isabelle 
Ralls of Godwin. She was a resilient woman who survived cancer, triple-
bypass surgery, and kidney failure. She devoted her life to others, 
spending years as a caregiver for the Peace Corps. She was a Sunday 
school teacher and the church historian at Spring Hills Baptist Church. 
Her family and friends will always remember her as a phenomenal woman 
and role model who had an inspiring faith in God.
  These are just a couple of stories about the victims of Hurricane 
Matthew. They were all people I could probably tell stories about. They 
were mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, and loving friends--28 
precious lives lost in total. I hope the family and friends of the 
victims know that millions of North Carolinians and people across the 
Nation are praying for them and their recovery.

[[Page 14491]]

  Although the loss of life alone was devastating, it is really not the 
total story. In fact, it will take years to recover. Hurricane Matthew 
was a massive storm. To give you an idea, it is what is referred to as 
a 1,000-year flood event. In other words, for this area, statistically 
speaking, it will be another 1,000 years before they see the amount of 
water dumped in the same period of time. It was a 500-year flood event 
for a massive part of Eastern North Carolina. Thousands of people were 
forced out of their homes and relocated to shelters. Many are still in 
temporary housing and thousands of the homes are not habitable. The 
storm flooded areas that were well outside of the 100-year floodplain. 
So many of them didn't have flood insurance.
  Last week I visited one of those communities. It was a Habitat for 
Humanity community that had some 90 homes built over the last 15 to 16 
years. Sixty of those homes are under water. Those 60 homes are not 
habitable, and as a result, 60 families are displaced.
  The pain is, as I said before, hard to imagine. It is immeasurable. 
To give you an idea, we have reports of several victims, and I have 
summarized a few of them. Another victim is Ann Johnson from Lenoir 
County, another county that was hard hit. She was one of the many 
people who were displaced and had to live in a shelter. As she was 
waiting in the shelter, she told a reporter:

       I just feel kind of lost right now, loss for words. You 
     kind of feel like you don't have anything and you're just 
     starting all over again.

  Another victim, Perry Harris of Johnston County, south of Raleigh, 
sustained more than $1 million in damage to a small business that four 
of his children worked at and had for some 15 years. He said:

       It is very emotional. I've been trying to do the best I 
     can. I have four kids that work for me. It has been very hard 
     on my family. We just don't know what tomorrow brings.

  Another victim, Charlie Mitchell, who is a farmer in Wayne County, 
lost the home he lived in for 49 years. He has a 2,000-acre farm that 
was submerged under water. He said: ``I've been in floods or around 
floods all my life, but I've never seen anything like this.''
  Hurricane Matthew has been especially difficult for children as well. 
In fact, the teachers and school counselors in Cumberland County asked 
the students to write down their experience to kind of help them begin 
to cope and recover from the traumatic experience. There was one sixth 
grade student who wrote:

       I heard a loud crack followed by three loud thuds. When my 
     family got out of bed, I saw three big trees, and one 
     destroyed the kitchen. Not even five minutes after we left, 
     the ceiling collapsed in all rooms except for the bathroom 
     and my mom's room.

  Matthew has been a life-changing event for many North Carolinians. 
Relatives and friends who lost a loved one, families who lost their 
homes, small businesses and owners who can no longer find a place to 
work and employ others, farmers who have watched their once-fertile 
land become unproductive due to the flooding.
  I share these stories because North Carolina will need help, just 
like West Virginia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. 
Those States have also has been damaged in this storm season or in the 
flood season. Many people lost their lives, and those States need help. 
North Carolina needs help.
  My team is working with Senator Burr and my House colleagues to 
really try and quantify the damage. Over the next couple of weeks, we 
will be working to make sure we work with our colleagues in other 
States to make sure they get the assistance they desperately need 
before we leave at the end of the year.
  More than anything else, I want to make sure the victims of this 
storm know they have people working for them, and we are going to make 
sure this great body and this Nation comes to their aid in their time 
of crisis.
  I thank the Presiding Officer.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tillis). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                           wasteful spending

  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, after a long district work period and a 
national election, I am returning to the Senate floor to resume my 
weekly ``Waste of the Week'' speeches.
  The Presiding Officer and my colleagues have watched me come to the 
floor 53 times in the 114th Congress to talk about documented waste, 
fraud, and abuse, and the expenditure of funds--of taxpayer dollars--on 
things that produce no positive effect.
  Regardless of which party is controlling any branch of government--
and we have had a significant change here in just the last couple of 
weeks--it is imperative that our focus remains on governing for the 
benefit of the American people, and this includes, from my perspective, 
rooting out any kind of waste, fraud, and abuse found within the 
Federal Government.
  Taxpayers should demand an effective and efficient government that 
spends their money on the behalf and the future of this country and on 
behalf of the future of our constituents. When they read about waste, 
fraud, and abuse, it is perfectly natural that they would call on us to 
address the problem, which has been paying a dime more than is 
necessary to run the Federal Government, and to pull us out of this 
ever-spiraling deficit spending and deep entrance into debt which may 
not be able to be repaid.
  That is why I am taking a look at yet another waste of the week, and 
this one is called identity theft tax refund fraud which, over the past 
2 years, has accounted for $23 billion in stolen taxpayer money; that 
is right, $23 billion of stolen taxpayer money.
  How does this happen? Well, the theft occurs when criminals gain 
access to someone else's personal information, like their name and 
Social Security number, in order to essentially steal the tax refund 
that might be owed to them for the tax returns that have been 
interrupted and sent before the victim's tax return has actually been 
filed. Often criminals file someone else's tax return before the victim 
does so the IRS ends up sending tax refund money to criminals instead 
of the workers who earned the money. When such abuses happen, not only 
is the IRS unknowingly paying criminals, but the real tax refunds are 
denied or seriously delayed to the millions of hard-working Americans 
who are counting on those refunds.
  So for families who struggle to make ends meet, annual tax refunds 
are often seen as a lifeline, but when those families have their tax 
returns stolen, it can take up to a year or more to rectify this mess.
  Sadly, many of these criminals prey on senior citizens and low-income 
individuals because they know they are more likely to receive a tax 
refund and less likely to pursue the lengthy and often complicated 
process of getting the tax return that is due them.
  Some hacks have even targeted children under the age of 14, often 
because parents don't think it is necessary to monitor their children's 
credit. Unfortunately, this makes children easy targets.
  Within the past decade, identity theft-related tax fraud has 
exploded. In fact, from 2011 to 2014, the Government Accountability 
Office and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, 
TIGTA, estimates that the IRS paid out $23 billion in tax refunds to 
identity thieves instead of the taxpayer who was due the money. Let 
that sink in--$23 billion paid out by the Federal Government to 
criminals in just a 4-year period of time, and that is just the fraud 
the IRS has discovered. We don't know the number of returns that have 
not been identified or discovered over that period of time. This is the 
year 2016, and this is an ever-increasing amount of money in fraud that 
is occurring.
  The continued success of those who are able to hack in and get Social 
Security numbers of individuals and use that to steal their tax returns 
is drawing ever more criminal activity. These

[[Page 14492]]

criminals are getting more sophisticated, making it much harder for the 
IRS to track down and next to impossible for the government to recover 
those funds.
  There is no silver bullet for addressing identity tax fraud. The IRS 
has detected and prevented numerous attempts of ID theft-related tax 
fraud. However, there is more that can and should be done.
  First, the IRS data security system needs to be updated to comply 
with the Federal Government's own security standards. According to 
TIGTA, three different Federal agencies have data security requirements 
for the Federal Government, and the IRS data system doesn't fully 
comply with any of them. This could be fixed. It should be fixed 
immediately.
  Coordinating between agencies is something I have been talking about 
over and over again. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is 
doing. Social Security disability doesn't know about Social Security 
retirement payments and the unemployment insurance disability being 
paid. There is a lack of communication between agencies within the 
Federal Government.
  The Government Accountability Office, GAO, testified at the Senate 
Finance Committee in April that there are nearly 100 recommendations 
that the GAO has made to the IRS to improve their data security. So the 
government agency charged with looking at how efficient or inefficient 
an agency is has the opportunity to make recommendations to that 
agency, and hopefully they will be complied with, but because of our 
lack of oversight in the U.S. Congress, we are not following up with 
enough pressure on those agencies to actually employ those 
recommendations. As a consequence, we are standing down here on the 
floor talking about this waste that goes on and on. Yet we don't go 
after the agencies to get those recommendations in place.
  We learned that GAO's 100 recommendations have not been fully 
implemented, and worse, more than half of these recommendations are 
over 1 year old.
  Imagine how the American people would react if a private company had 
so many persistent holes in its data system that it wrongfully paid 
criminals $23 billion of their money.
  Another way to prevent fraud suggested by the IRS watchdogs is to 
first receive the W-2 forms before issuing refunds. Here is what 
happens: employers issue the W-2s showing how much you earn and we 
attach those to our tax returns. The problem is, the tax returns that 
go to the government and the returns that come in from the taxpayer are 
not coordinated, and so there is a gap that potentially exists. The 
2017 tax-filing season will be the first year this accelerated system 
is implemented to address this particular issue because the legislation 
that was passed in 2015, which I supported, has accelerated the 
issuance of W-2s from the IRS so the IRS can verify the validity of the 
return.
  In the meantime, I will continue to work with my colleagues in the 
Senate as long as I am here to keep the pressure on the IRS to ensure 
it meets Federal data security requirements and fulfills the other 
unimplemented security recommendations.
  So adding to our chart, which we thought when we started we might be 
able to reach $100 billion--we weren't sure--but it just keeps coming 
in. It just keeps pouring in, record after record, examination after 
examination, by certified nonpartisan government organizations. We 
added $23 billion more to the waste of the week thermometer, reaching 
now well over $350 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse.
  To those who say there are no more cuts we can make in spending to 
reduce the deficit and the ever-increasing Federal debt or to those who 
say we need to find ways to address critical needs such as funds to 
address the spread of the Zika virus or money for cancer research or 
money to help strengthen our military during this time of conflict and 
threat to our homeland, I say to them: Let's at least start with what 
we know are tax dollars that are lost to waste, fraud, and abuse. We 
owe that to the taxpayers and to future generations. We owe that to our 
children and grandchildren who will be saddled with this debt. We owe 
that to our Nation to run an effective, efficient government to retain 
the trust of the American people that the tax dollars they sent to 
Washington are wisely spent for necessary purposes that only the 
Federal Government can accomplish.
  We have a duty. We have a duty that rises above politics. We have a 
duty to make every effort we can to make government efficient and 
effective on behalf of the taxpayer.
  So I am calling on my colleagues to say, yes, we need to look at the 
long-term impact in our midst. It is critical. It can have negative 
implications for the future of America. Until we get to that point--and 
we have made several attempts to do that under this administration, and 
each one was shut down before it hit the White House or was rejected by 
the White House--can't we at least look at the $350 billion of waste, 
fraud, and abuse that is documented? Can't we at least start there? 
That is what I am calling on my colleagues to do. We don't have many 
weeks left in this session, but you can count on me being here each 
week that we have left, talking yet again about yet another instance of 
waste, fraud, and abuse.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Arizona.

                          ____________________