[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 16275-16279]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              BANKRUPTCY JUDGESHIP ACT OF 2017--Continued

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
mandatory quorum call with respect to the cloture motion on the House 
message to accompany H.R. 2266 be waived.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON. Madam President, to accommodate the majority leader, I 
ask unanimous consent--I understand that he will object, and I will 
explain it afterward, but it involves what you see here in the 
aftermath of the hurricane, all of this citrus fruit on the ground--
that it be in order to call up my amendment No. 1575--approximately $3 
billion for all of the agriculture for Florida and Texas, which Senator 
Cornyn, Senator Rubio, and I have all been working on--to the motion to 
concur with an amendment to the House message on H.R. 2266 and that the 
amendment be agreed to with no intervening action or debate.
  In order to accommodate the majority leader, I will explain it after 
he has returned to his meeting.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The majority leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I 
would say to my good friend from Florida that I hope he knows that the 
Senate remains committed to doing its part to support the ongoing 
hurricane relief efforts. We all see this as a multistaged process in 
providing needed relief.

[[Page 16276]]

There will be additional rounds, and we are all fully committed to 
meeting the needs that have arisen as a result of these devastating 
hurricanes.
  For the moment, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON. Madam President, in my explanation, I will go into it in 
detail.
  It is my hope that the White House promise that this will be taken up 
in November, which is the next tranche of the hurricane money, the 
disaster assistance. It has been well past a month since Hurricane Irma 
hit Puerto Rico and 2 months since it hit Florida, and Floridians all 
across our State are working as hard as ever to recover.
  One group of individuals who were hit especially hard by this storm 
is Florida's citrus growers. I will refer again to this photograph. You 
can see the citrus grove. You can see the branches on the citrus trees. 
Some of the trees have blown over, but in the meantime, you can see all 
of the fruit that is on the ground.
  Toward southwest Florida, at least 75 percent of the crops are on the 
ground. In more central Florida, it is upward of 50 and 60 percent. Of 
all the times, this was going to be a bumper crop. Lord knows, with the 
greening disease--its nickname is ``greening,'' but it is a bacteria--
it will kill the tree in 5 years, and it has been declining the citrus 
production over the course of the last 10 years. We had suffered enough 
through all of that, and then here had come this hurricane. When it 
looked as if there was going to be a good crop to turn around the 
lessened production that had occurred over each of the last 10 years, 
this is what happened.
  If that were not enough--all of the fruit on the ground--take a look 
at this. This is what has happened to citrus groves. Whole trees have 
been blown over. Whether you are talking about a grove that is totally 
demolished or a grove that has lost almost all of its crop, that is why 
the Florida citrus growers are in such a very difficult economic 
situation. Some of Florida's farmers lost nearly everything when Irma 
tore through the State. In fact, the statewide agricultural industry 
has lost more than $2.5 billion. Included in that is $760 million that 
Florida's citrus industry alone, just by itself, has lost, as you see 
in these photographs.
  Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released its 
first crop estimates for the 2017-2018 citrus season. They estimated 
that Florida's citrus growers would harvest 54 million boxes of oranges 
this year, but that number doesn't yet fully account for all the damage 
caused by Hurricane Irma.
  According to the folks on the ground, they believe the actual 
estimate is going to be only 31 million boxes this season. Now compare 
31 million boxes to a decade ago when Florida harvested over 203 
million boxes. Ten years before that, Florida growers harvested 244 
million boxes. Now they are estimating, after the storm, a yield of 
only 31 million boxes.
  So the Florida citrus growers are really taking a hit. They have to 
have disaster assistance. The citrus industry is a vital part of 
Florida's economy, and that is why Senator Rubio is here with us. We 
have been pushing so hard to get our citrus growers some help.
  Just a couple of days after the storm, Senator Rubio and I met with a 
group of growers in a citrus grove in Polk County in Central Florida, 
where the loss is about 50 or 60 percent, unlike South Florida, where 
the loss is 75 to 90 percent.
  Unfortunately, the White House has been saying: No, we can't do it in 
this disaster assistance bill. As we have been working on a bipartisan 
amendment that would provide the growers with the help they need, the 
same amendment that the majority leader had to object to, President 
Trump has reportedly been making calls urging others in the Chamber to 
move forward with the overall package as is and to nix the money we 
need to help Florida's farmers.
  Florida's citrus industry may have been one of the industry's hardest 
hit by the storm, but it certainly wasn't the only industry that was 
affected in Florida. Florida's fruit and vegetable farms lost more than 
$180 million when their fields were flooded and their bushes were 
ripped straight out of the ground. Row crops, such as peanuts, cotton, 
sweet corn, potatoes, and sugarcane together experienced nearly $450 
million in losses from the hurricane-force winds and heavy rains.
  Senator Rubio went to Hastings to see the potato farms. He saw how 
they had been ripped to shreds. Florida's nurseries lost nearly $625 
million when their greenhouses were damaged by the winds. Florida's 
timber industry lost $261 million. Florida's cattlemen, whose ranches, 
barns, fences, and equipment were severely damaged, lost a total of 
$237 million in losses. Dairy farmers had to dump more than $2 million 
worth of milk because they couldn't store it properly after they lost 
power.
  Farmers are the lifeblood of this country and an important part of 
Florida's economy. Right now, they desperately need our help. In urging 
the Senate to move forward with this disaster package as it is, not 
amended, President Trump has told some of our colleagues that he would 
support adding this additional agriculture money in a later 
supplemental next month. To my colleagues who have farmers and ranchers 
in their own States, you know as well as we do that these families and 
businesses can't wait any longer. They need our help, and they need it 
now. I ask you to consider how you would react if those farmers and 
ranchers suffered $2.5 billion in losses from a single natural 
disaster, as our agriculture industry in Florida has.
  So, to accommodate the majority leader, I already made the unanimous 
consent request, which the majority leader objected to. I want to 
further state that to fulfill the White House promise of including the 
disaster aid farmers desperately need, I have placed a hold on the 
President's nominee for Deputy Director of the Office of Management and 
Budget. Getting the additional money next month could be the difference 
between whether Florida's farmers can replant their crops next year or 
not.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. RUBIO. Thank you, Madam President.
  I thank the senior Senator from Florida on this issue. I want to 
elaborate on it a little further. Any time we ask the taxpayers of this 
country to step in and help a private industry, it is important and 
incumbent on us to justify why. The amendment he just made that we have 
been working to get included in what is before the Senate obviously 
deals with agriculture at large, and he described some of the different 
industries in Florida that have been hurt in agriculture and some of 
the crops in Florida that were impacted by the storm.
  The reason I want to focus my attention on citrus is not because we 
don't care about the other industries that were damaged, but citrus is 
in a unique and precarious place. I want to describe it to people who 
may not be as familiar with this as those who live in Florida and see 
it all the time.
  First, I would say that one of the signature issues in the campaign 
and in politics today is the desire to make more and produce more in 
the United States; the idea that somehow, because of these changes in 
the global economy, we have lost significant industries to other 
countries, and we talk about that primarily in manufacturing, but we 
also talk about it in technology and things of this nature. I don't 
think we should leave agriculture out of that conversation. If we want 
there to be agriculture in the United States, then we have to deal with 
each of those crops and the unique challenges they face. We most 
certainly want to have agriculture in the United States.
  A lot of people don't identify Florida as an agricultural State. It 
is better known for its tourism and being one of the largest places 
where people move to be in warm weather and not have State income tax, 
but Florida is a large agricultural State. I encourage people to look 
at the numbers. If you have

[[Page 16277]]

spent any significant time in Florida, it is not just something we put 
on our license plates and not something we call ourselves in our 
heritage, it is real now. Tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands 
of jobs across the supply chain and entire communities are sustained by 
the presence of agriculture. In the case of citrus, the overwhelming 
majority of growers are actually families who have had these operations 
for sometimes two or three generations and are trying to stay afloat.
  You look at this and ask: What is this industry doing wrong to be 
under these circumstances? Yes, they had a storm, but why can't they 
rebuild like everybody else? Two things. First, citrus in Florida was 
already facing an extraordinary challenge. It wasn't a better orange or 
better grapefruit that some other countries are doing than we are. It 
is a disease called citrus greening that didn't just blemish the fruit 
the way the canker did, but it killed the trees. You have a significant 
number of growers who are on the borderline of being out of business 
because unlike--and I am not diminishing other people's losses here, on 
the contrary--but unlike a manufacturing plant that gets wiped out by a 
storm, where you put the new machine in and in 6 months you are up and 
running, that is not the way it works with citrus.
  The time between when you plant the new tree and produce fruit is 4 
to 5 years, and you have to stay afloat in between. They are already 
facing that. So that already has them on the brink of catastrophe, and 
they have been working very hard to get around and design scientific 
solutions. They have made some advances, thanks to the work at the 
University of Florida, but they are not there yet. In the process, they 
have been hurting already.
  You heard about the production figures and how low they have gotten, 
and here comes the storm. The first thing it does is knock all the 
fruit off the trees. When we flew over these groves, all we saw on the 
ground was fruit all over the place. As those familiar with agriculture 
know, once that fruit gets in the floodwater, it can't be sold, and you 
can't do much with it. The fruit continued to fall over the days to 
come.
  On top of everything else they were facing, they lost this year's 
crops. A lot of these fields were flooded, so they were sitting in feet 
of water. That kills the trees, and they will continue to lose trees in 
the weeks to come.
  Put yourself in the position of the grower who has to say: I have 
already lost everything for this year. I lost a bunch of trees that I 
will not have next year or the year after that. I was facing citrus 
greening. Do I really want to replant or has the time come to sell my 
land for some other use, development, or has the time come for me to go 
into another crop or has the time come to declare bankruptcy? This is 
the life challenge of American agriculture families in the State of 
Florida.
  Look, I hope very much that in November we are going to be here next 
month and we are going to pass a new bill and it will have this money 
in there and it will be fantastic, but we know how this place works, 
and I don't know why we wouldn't do it now. Do we truly want to keep 
American businesses in America? This is a great example of an 
opportunity to do it.
  It is not an industry that benefits from anything extraordinary from 
the government. They are literally on the verge of going away unless we 
help them sooner rather than later. We have the entire Florida 
delegation in the House in favor of it, and they couldn't get it in the 
House bill. You have both Senators here for it. It can't be a part of 
this because if we change it, it goes back, and we lose time.
  No one can tell you why it is not in there, no one can tell you why 
they are against it being in there, but it is not in there. Sometimes 
you start to wonder, and you guess why people look at this process and 
shake their heads.
  Unfortunately, it looks like this has been foreclosed. Obviously, 
Senator Nelson moved forward and made that motion and it was objected 
to so it will not be a part of this package, but I hope we think about 
these men and women and families who own the groves. How do you explain 
it to them and what happens if it goes away? What happens if we lose 
this industry? It will not just hurt Florida, I think it hurts the 
country. I think it sets a precedent for other crops that might be 
threatened by floods in the future.
  I hope this can be reversed, and I am hopeful we will deal with it in 
November, but if we don't, I just want everyone to understand what this 
means. This is not hyperbole. This industry is in a lot of trouble. I 
am not telling you that the amount of money we are asking for alone 
will save them, but without it, sooner rather than later, I feel we 
will lose not just Florida citrus, but I feel we will lose something as 
a key part of the State's heritage and a key crop for the country, and 
we will depend more than ever on foreign imports to feed our people 
with this problem.
  With that, I yield the floor.


                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before 
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 
     2266.
         Mitch McConnell, Pat Roberts, Roy Blunt, Shelley Moore 
           Capito, Mike Rounds, John Thune, Orrin G. Hatch, Deb 
           Fischer, Cory Gardner, John Barrasso, Johnny Isakson, 
           John Boozman, Thom Tillis, Richard Burr, James M. 
           Inhofe, Roger F. Wicker, Lindsey Graham.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
motion to concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 
2266, an act to amend title 28 of the United States Code to authorize 
the appointment of additional bankruptcy judges; and for other 
purposes, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. 
Moran), and the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Sullivan).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. 
Menendez) and the Senator from Michigan (Ms. Stabenow) are necessarily 
absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 79, nays 16, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 246 Leg.]

                                YEAS--79

     Alexander
     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Booker
     Boozman
     Brown
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Capito
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Cassidy
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coons
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cortez Masto
     Cruz
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Ernst
     Feinstein
     Fischer
     Franken
     Gardner
     Gillibrand
     Grassley
     Harris
     Hassan
     Hatch
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hirono
     Hoeven
     Isakson
     Kaine
     Kennedy
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCain
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Merkley
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Portman
     Reed
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Scott
     Shaheen
     Tester
     Thune
     Tillis
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Wyden
     Young

                                NAYS--16

     Barrasso
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Enzi
     Flake
     Inhofe
     Johnson
     Lankford
     Lee
     Paul
     Perdue
     Risch
     Sasse
     Shelby
     Strange
     Toomey

                             NOT VOTING--5

     Graham
     Menendez
     Moran
     Stabenow
     Sullivan
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 79, the nays 16.
  Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in 
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.

[[Page 16278]]

  Cloture having been invoked, the motion to refer falls.
  The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. LEE. Madam President, as we speak, our fellow citizens in Puerto 
Rico, Texas, and Florida are recovering from a series of devastating 
hurricanes. Over 100 people have lost their lives because of these 
terrible storms, and many more are struggling to get by day to day.
  The crisis is perhaps most acute in Puerto Rico, where 35 percent of 
the population still does not have access to safe drinking water and 
four out of five Puerto Ricans do not have power.
  The people of Florida, Puerto Rico, and Texas have responded with 
great tenacity and admirable creativity to this disaster. I wish the 
same could be said of the politicians here in Washington, DC.
  Once again, this body is poised to fail the American people. Instead 
of helping the victims of these disasters through responsible aid 
paired with lasting reform, Congress has rushed to its favorite so-
called solution--billions of dollars in new spending with little 
accountability or meaningful oversight.
  If this $36.5 billion aid package passes, it will mean even more 
money and more power for government programs that in some cases left us 
vulnerable to these disasters in the first place. If it passes, the 
politicians and lobbyists will pat themselves on the back for doing a 
good deed and then move on to the next multibillion dollar spending 
opportunity. Meanwhile, the people of Florida, Puerto Rico, and Texas 
will be left to pick up the pieces and to deal with the disastrous 
consequences of this approach.
  Puerto Rico, in particular, has to contend with the effects of a 
devastating storm and decades of malfeasance that has left Puerto Rico 
with $74 billion of debt.
  This crisis calls for emergency aid, yes. More than that, it calls 
for true lasting reform, the type of reform that is noticeably absent 
from this measure. That is why I am voting no on this shortsighted 
bill, because it is easy to caricature a vote against emergency aid as 
calloused or cruel, but it is hard to do the real work that is 
necessarily required by real, lasting, meaningful reform.
  It is harder still to defend these packages when their contents are 
exposed fully to the light of day. If you were evaluating an emergency 
aid package, you might reasonably expect it to direct all of its 
spending to programs that actually help the people of Florida, of 
Puerto Rico, of Texas, but this proposal does not even come close to 
directing all of its money to broad-based recovery efforts.
  Just under half of the $36.5 billion in new spending would bail out 
the National Flood Insurance Program, or NFIP. In the Houston area, 
just 17 percent of homeowners were enrolled in the NFIP. In Puerto 
Rico, the numbers are even more sparse. Just 5,600 Puerto Ricans are 
enrolled in NFIP, less than 1 percent of homeowners. That means 99 
percent of Puerto Ricans will not get anything at all from the $16 
billion to NFIP. But then again, it is not clear that NFIP recipients 
get much from NFIP to begin with.
  The National Flood Insurance Program represents the triumph of good 
intentions over sound public policy. Its generous subsidies were 
supposed to reduce the need for Federal aid after massive storms. 
Instead, NFIP encourages thousands of Americans to live in some of the 
most dangerous real estate in the country.
  NFIP sells flood insurance at rates well below that of any reasonable 
private insurer. As a result, its policies do not accurately reflect 
the risk of living in manifestly flood-threatened, flood-endangered 
areas. These government policies encourage Americans to live in 
precisely those areas where their livelihoods--and, in fact, even their 
lives--can be swept away in an instant.
  Economists refer to this perverse incentive as moral hazard, and, in 
more senses than one, that is just what the National Flood Insurance 
Program is--a hazard to Americans. It is distinctly immoral for the 
government to subsidize housing in the Nation's flood plains--deep 
within the flood plains--or on the edges of its coast. Instead of 
building your house on a rock, the government wants you to build it on 
the sand.
  NFIP pays out claims for properties that have been swept away not 
once, not twice, but many, many times before. Homes that have been 
flooded multiple times make up just 1 percent of NFIP policyholders, 
but they account for more than one-third of its claims. This has cost 
taxpayers more than $12.1 billion in payouts according to the 
Congressional Research Service.
  When Hurricane Harvey swept through Houston last month, it submerged 
a house that had been flooded 22 times since 1979. The house is valued 
at about $600,000. The government has spent $1.8 million to 
rehabilitate it.
  No private insurance company would ever offer insurance on the terms 
that NFIP offers. Such a company would endanger its policyholders, and 
it would run out of money.
  That is precisely what has happened under NFIP. The program is $25 
billion in debt and routinely blows through its statutory debt limits.
  The emergency aid package Congress is considering today would cancel 
$16 billion of NFIP's debt--no questions asked. Congress isn't making 
NFIP bring its actuarial practices in line with reality or into 
conformity with free-market forces. No, it isn't even appropriating new 
funds for another failed program. That, at least, would be business as 
usual in Washington. Instead, Congress is effectively giving a debt 
amnesty to the National Flood Insurance Program. It is absolving NFIP 
of its sins and making American taxpayers do the penance.
  So that is an example of what is in the bill. Let's consider a little 
bit of what is not in the bill.
  If we want to be responsible leaders in a moment of crisis like this 
one, we need to provide long-term reforms in addition to any short-term 
assistance. We need to provide a full meal to those affected by these 
storms and not just a temporary, passing sugar rush.
  But this bill does not include any reforms that would help Puerto 
Rico attain long-term stability or climb out from underneath its $74 
billion debt. It doesn't even attempt to reform the dysfunctional 
electrical utility program which, through a combination of neglect and 
profiteering, has left millions of Puerto Ricans in darkness. Without 
electricity, Puerto Rico can't power hospitals, clinics, food banks, or 
even sewage systems. And it doesn't repeal the Jones Act, the 
protectionist regulation that kept foreign-flagged relief ships out of 
Puerto Rican harbors for precious days after Hurricane Maria and for a 
long time has forced Puerto Rican consumers to pay significantly higher 
prices on just about everything they buy.
  Simple reform measures such as reforming PREPA, the electric utility 
company I mentioned a moment ago, or repealing the Jones Act would 
provide very meaningful, lasting benefits to Puerto Ricans long after 
the public's attention has drifted and the relief money has dried up. 
But Congress, true to form, would rather double down on broken laws and 
broken programs rather than fix them, and Congress would rather take on 
more debt than spend according to what we have and prioritize in order 
to get there.
  None of this $36.5 billion in emergency spending is offset by 
spending reductions on other programs--none of it--not a single dollar. 
That is the sad irony of this bill. If the trend of deficit-fueled 
spending continues, one day soon we will wake up to the cries of our 
fellow Americans and we will have nothing to give them in support.
  Again, this bill doesn't take care of those programs, and it is not 
as if there aren't solutions out there. One of my colleagues, Senator 
Paul, has effectively been blocked from introducing an amendment that 
would call for offsets to this spending. Another one of my colleagues, 
Senator Flake, has tried to introduce an amendment, of which I am a 
cosponsor, that would bring about some of these other reforms I have 
described--reforms to the State-owned utility company, to the Jones 
Act, and reforms to the way that we spend money through the Federal 
Government in Puerto Rico.

[[Page 16279]]

  I hope my colleagues will work with me on a more responsible, 
sustainable, meaningful way to help our brothers and sisters in areas 
affected by the recent hurricanes. Congress has the authority to lead, 
especially over Puerto Rico, where we have plenary power that exceeds 
the authority we have in other parts of the country within States. In 
this hour of crisis, especially with regard to Puerto Rico, we are the 
only ones who indisputably have this power, and we are the ones who 
must act if we are going to achieve meaningful reform.
  If we can only offer money and a pat on the head, it will be our 
fault when the American people continue to suffer as a result of failed 
programs that haven't worked and call out to us through their failures 
for reform.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Madam President, I urge the Senate to approve the 
disaster relief supplemental appropriations bill.
  This bill will provide additional funding for response and recovery 
operations in areas devastated by recent hurricanes.
  The storms this year have been severe in both strength and number. 
Communities in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands 
are struggling to recover.
  Both the Disaster Relief Fund and the National Flood Insurance 
Program are depleted. They will soon run out of money for disaster 
response and to pay flood insurance claims.
  The supplemental funding in this bill will ensure that first 
responders and Federal agencies have the necessary resources to 
continue their important work.
  This bill also includes funding in response to the deadly wildfires 
that have ravaged western States. While these emergency funds are 
needed now, I will continue working with my colleagues to find a better 
way to fund wildfire suppression in the future.
  This will not be the end of our efforts to respond to this year's 
disasters. The Appropriations Committee will continue to work with the 
administration and with the affected delegations to determine and 
provide for additional recovery needs. I am committed to doing what is 
necessary to get the job done.
  Mr. LEE. 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. DAINES. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________