Providing for consideration of motions to suspend the rules.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 426 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

(Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 426 provides that suspensions will be in order at any time on the legislative day of Thursday, September 8, 2005. This resolution will allow the House to consider and debate legislation to address the needs of the hurricane-ravaged areas of the Gulf Coast in our country, such as increased borrowing authority for the National Flood Insurance program, the Student Grant Hurricane and Disaster Relief Act, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Response and Recovery Act, and a supplemental emergency appropriations bill.

Mr. Speaker, my community in South Florida was very fortunate that we did not have to bear the full brunt of this latest hurricane, Hurricane Katrina. Over a million of us in South Florida lost electricity. Many homes and businesses were flooded and some structural damage was caused to homes and businesses, but we did not bear the full brunt, the full fury of this latest hurricane, Katrina.

We in South Florida were very fortunate as well to receive generous aid from fellow Americans in the wake of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. As a Hurricane Andrew survivor, I have an idea of the trials and tribulations that face hurricane survivors. I am also very much aware that assistance from the Federal Government is essential for a comprehensive and robust recovery effort.

With that said, I wish to make clear to our friends in the Gulf Coast that we will continue to mobilize nationwide in response to this tragedy, we will remain steadfast in our commitment to the recovery effort, and we will not walk away from our obligations to our fellow Americans. Just as we did after Hurricane Andrew, Mr. Speaker, together it is that we will rebuild and together it is that we will recover.

In response to this terrible disaster, the majority leadership of this House has set out a plan to continue helping the victims of this terrible catastrophe. Last week, the House of Representatives passed emergency funding totaling $10.5 billion to provide urgently needed relief to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Congress needs to do more for the victims of this catastrophe, and we will. We will consider, I am certain, other supplemental bills, and they will provide additional billions for recovery and rebuilding efforts in the Gulf Coast.

The American people have demonstrated their resiliency before and will do so again. We will continue to work to comfort those who suffer. Rescue workers are at this moment lined up across this great Nation to support the recovery effort that is under way, and volunteers from every corner of America are ready to support those efforts. Our prayers continue to go out to the victims, to their families and to all the valiant rescue workers. The spirit of community, of generosity and good will across the country gives me confidence that Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama will recover from this tragedy, and they will be better than ever before.

House Resolution 426, Mr. Speaker, is a necessary rule for our efforts to assist the victims of Hurricane Katrina. I would like to say a special word of thanks to the Speaker, to the majority leader, to the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and to the minority leadership for their swift action on this issue as was begun to be demonstrated last week. I urge my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, to support both the rule and support the emergency legislation that is authorized under this rule.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to be bringing forth to the floor today a rule that will permit the consideration of various pieces of legislation to continue to provide very needed assistance to those who are suffering as we speak.

As I mentioned before in my prior remarks, Mr. Speaker, there are four pieces of legislation that this rule that we will be voting on this morning authorizes consideration of: the national flood insurance program, assistance for that program; the Student Grant Hurricane and Disaster Relief Act, assistance for that program; the Temporary Assistance For Needy Families Emergency Response and Recovery Act, assistance for that program; and an emergency supplemental. Those four pieces of legislation, the rule that we are debating on at this time, are authorized to be debated by this House.

I wish to commend the two Senators from the State of Louisiana who, I was just able to read some of their joint statements, I think are demonstrating great responsibility in a spirit of bipartisanship. For example, the two Senators from Louisiana have stated, they say there will be ample time, and I agree with them, for Congress to thoroughly investigate the event.

They say, as well, and I also agree with them, that the focus now needs to be on food, on housing, on employment, on education and on health care, not on investigations. There will be plenty of time for this Congress, in its constitutional duty of oversight, to investigate. But I agree, as I say, with the Senators from Louisiana.

The focus now, and our focus in bringing forth authorizing consideration of the four pieces of legislation this morning, is on food, housing, employment, education and health care, assistance to those and for those who are suffering.

I see the Senators from Louisiana also made another point. In a joint bipartisan statement they say, please do not make the citizens of Louisiana victims once again by allowing our immediate needs to be delayed by partisanship.

Now, we do not want to delay assistance by partisanship or any other reason, and that is why we are bringing forth this rule. We have brought forth this rule to authorize consideration of four measures to take assistance, to

continue to make available assistance to those who are suffering at this time, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud of the fact that the rule that we have brought forth this morning, and I reiterate that I am so, authorizes consideration by this House today of four legislative measures, four, to continue to increase assistance to those who are suffering pursuant to the destruction caused by that extraordinary tragedy in the Gulf Coast.

Four pieces of legislation are being brought forth today, are being authorized to be brought forth today with the rule that we are considering this morning. Yes, I am very proud of that, Mr. Speaker.

Now, I have questions as well. I have questions as well with regard to a number of Federal agencies, State agencies, local agencies as well in the Gulf Coast.

My wife was reminding me last night that on the Friday before this horrible storm hit the Gulf Coast, she saw the director of the National Hurricane Center on national television with the Governor of Florida, by the way. We had the Governor of Florida and our local officials speaking to us continuously before and at the time and after the hurricane passed through us in south Florida before it went into the Gulf and then gathered all that strength that bore down with such horrible power on the Gulf Coast. And she was reminding me that the director of the National Hurricane Center, this is Friday before the hurricane hit late Sunday night, early Monday morning, the Gulf Coast, said it is headed to the Gulf. It is going to pick up strength and it could hit, it is going to land anywhere from the Florida Panhandle to New Orleans.

Now, as I was discussing with my wife last night, when we had the four hurricanes in Florida last year, and this one in south Florida this year, immediately our local officials, the mayor, the county commissioners, the mayors and the Governor, the State officials, they were speaking to the populace and instructing people to leave, evacuating people. Five times we have done so in 1 year.

So, yes, I have questions as to why that was not done in Louisiana, why it was not ordered by the mayors and by the county commissioners and by the Governors. I have questions. Of course I have questions, Mr. Speaker. We all have questions, and those questions need to be addressed. And they will be addressed as we proceed with our oversight function, which is legally required.

But today what we need to do is to get help to the people who need the help, and that is what we are doing, Mr. Speaker. That is why we have brought forth the legislation to authorize consideration of four measures to take assistance to those in need. That is what we are debating this morning.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, again with regard to what we have brought forth this morning, a rule for consideration of four pieces of legislation to provide assistance and to increase the aid that is going to those who are in desperate need in the Gulf Coast area now due to the great catastrophe that has just been suffered, that is what we are doing. We are authorizing consideration of four pieces of legislation to increase assistance to those in need.

Now, last night in the Committee on Rules, Mr. Speaker, our friends on the other side of the aisle, the minority party, brought forth one amendment to the rule that we are considering this morning and that amendment called for what is known as an open rule. In other words, that any Member of this House could bring forth any and all amendments that they may wish to do so, that they may have wished to do so with regard to any of the four pieces of legislation.

Now, I generally, Mr. Speaker, am for open rules. I think that is an appropriate goal and I think that we should, as much as possible, permit the free flow of debate on as many ideas as Members have. But if there has ever been a time when we could not, when we should not have an open rule which would permit, even if each of us only had one idea, and I think the Obey amendment is a very interesting one, he just explained it a few minutes ago, even if each of us had one idea in the form of an amendment like the one that was just explained by the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), we would have 435 amendments, Mr. Speaker, to debate.

This is not the time to have 435 or 100 or 50 amendments. This is the time to bring forth legislation, a rule in this case to authorize consideration of four pieces of legislation to assist those in need.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Biggert).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important that we realize that in the same fashion in which last week's supplemental legislation was considered under a unanimous consent request, it is the hope and wish of the majority leadership that the next supplemental bill also be considered in that way under unanimous consent.

With regard to additional time for debate or other matters, that could be obviously worked into a unanimous consent agreement like the one that brought forth and permitted debate and permitted passage of the first supplemental.

So what we are voting on today, the rule does not preclude that. On the contrary, as I say, it is the wish of the majority leadership to continue to engage in dialogue and hopefully have a unanimous consent agreement. I wanted to make that clear because sometimes I think the facts are important to be made clear.

Mr. Speaker, we reserve the balance of our time.

Yielding myself such time as I may consume, Mr. Speaker, we will have time for any and all of the measures that are brought forth if this rule passes, under authorization of this rule, for rational and any other kind of debate. I can assure my colleagues of that, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we reserve the balance of our time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

We are considering today, or authorizing consideration, bringing forth today under this rule, the national flood insurance program, assistance for that program for those in need in the

Gulf; the Student Grant Hurricane and Disaster Relief Act, assistance for the people in the Gulf with regard to student grants and disaster relief; the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Response and Recovery Act, assistance for those in need under this act, under that law, with that program, through that program.

We are bringing those measures, those specific measures to the floor today, in addition to a significant and substantial supplemental appropriations bill to get aid immediately to those in need.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop), my distinguished friend and colleague from the Committee on Rules.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman

from California (Mr. Dreier), the chairman of the Committee on Rules.

(Mr. DREIER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

What we are doing today, Mr. Speaker, is not shoving words down anybody. We are authorizing consideration for this House to pass assistance for the National Flood Insurance program, the Student Grant Hurricane and Disaster Relief Act, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Response and Recovery Act, and an emergency supplemental bill to continue the assistance to those in dreadful need as we speak.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I thank all of our colleagues who have debated this important issue this morning.

I would like again to also thank the two Senators from Louisiana, Senators Landrieu and Vitter for their joint bipartisan statement where they say that Congress will have ample time to thoroughly investigate this event and that they plan, as many of us do, to play a major role in those important investigations, but they continue saying, please do not make the citizens of Louisiana a victim once again by allowing our immediate needs to be delayed by partisanship.

Now, we have heard a number of ideas today brought forth, really for sweeping policy changes. They definitely should be considered. And perhaps many of those ideas will become law. But today what we need to do is what we are doing. We are getting the assistance and we are increasing it to those who are in desperate need.

So, Mr. Speaker, I would urge my colleagues to support this rule that brings forth four pieces of assistance, legislation for assistance to those in desperate need, and would also urge, obviously, favorable consideration of the underlying pieces of legislation that we are authorizing being considered today.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Ms. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, the vitally important bill before us today will help to begin the process of rebuilding one of our Nation's greatest regions and the lives of the people within it. It comes to us in the wake of what was last week nothing short of a catastrophic failure of responsible and competent governance. And not surprisingly, the way in which we are going about passing this bill is itself a tremendous failure, the most recent in a seemingly endless line.

It is a failure, Mr. Speaker, because almost no time has been provided for discussion of this bill and because no amendments have been permitted to be introduced. This body is about to spend more than $50 billion and all the minority wants is to spend it wisely. All we want is to give the Members a chance to know where the appropriations are going and to actually give Representatives from the affected States a chance to make suggestions to the legislation before it becomes law. We want to ensure that that this body will address as quickly as possible the tremendous errors which have been made by our Federal Government in its response to Hurricane Katrina.

Last night in the Rules Committee we implored the majority to allow even a mere 2 hours of debate and to allow Members to offer amendments which would make this a better, more effective bill. Their response? Sorry, America, we don't have time for that. We don't have time? After 5 weeks of recess in the Chamber, 40 minutes is all the time the United States Congress has to give? It took our government 5 days to even respond to the crisis, and we cannot give more than 40 minutes here today to craft a bill that will provide relief and help rebuild an entire region of our country? We tried to break through, but they simply would not hear us.

They would not hear us because they do not want to be challenged or blamed or to deal with alternative solutions. It simply wants us to accept its leadership, once again quietly and without comment. But what the American people want is reform. They want change. They want us to work hard here in the House and try to fix this mess. And so we will not keep quiet because our Nation is demanding that we speak out.

This government failed the people of Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama. This government, one so willing to tell other nations and peoples how they should live their lives and organize their states, has revealed itself to be unable to save the lives of its own citizens and to protect its own States when they are in need. Indeed, that neglect has cost lives. It was unable to meet its most basic responsibility and the ultimate reason for its very existence, the defense of life within its own borders.

It is obvious that the current administration and departments in its care did not have a plan sufficient to handle the kind of crisis they were confronted with. Disturbingly, however, they were armed with a plan to shift blame away from themselves. And so a few days ago, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff tried to blame local government officials for what had happened. Such an argument is embarrassing and shameful because this Federal Government has not been adequately supporting those State and local officials in the years that led up to last week, and it did not give them what they needed after the hurricane struck. Instead, it neglected them and then kicked them when they were down.

This kind of situation is exactly why FEMA exists. That is why it is called Federal emergency management. That is exactly why it was part of the Homeland Security Department. The $90 billion that has been spent on the Homeland Security agency has left us more vulnerable than ever. If there is an American that feels safer after the expenditure of that $90 billion, I would like to meet them. Do they feel safer? Absolutely not.

There was a tremendous outpouring of help coming from locations around America and the world during the first days of this crisis, but FEMA and Homeland Security were unable to use it constructively. One thousand firefighters sent from Utah and nearby areas were asked to do community relations work, handing out leaflets, instead of putting out blazes and rescuing children. Aid and rescue technology offered by more than 90 countries has often been unable to penetrate FEMA's bureaucracy and has yet to be used. Wal-Mart sent three trailer trucks of water to New Orleans early last week but were turned back by FEMA officials. They said they did not need it. To people who had no water.

FEMA would not let a nearby Coast Guard ship distribute 1,000 gallons of fuel to people on land. And while that particular ship was able to take on patients and treat them and give them medical care, they were awaiting the orders that never came. FEMA cut the emergency communication lines that authorities in Jefferson Parish were using, for who knows what reason. The president of Jefferson Parish had the sheriff's department replace those lines and put them under armed guards to protect them from? FEMA.

Mr. Speaker, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The tales of failure go on and on and on. Failure before Katrina, failure during Katrina and failure after Katrina.

Ours is a government which has spent much of the last 4 years focused on national security. Ours is government which has spent tens of billions of dollars theoretically preparing our country for impending disasters. Ours is a government which has justified its hold on power by warning us that only this administration's leaders could keep America safe. But the administration was not up to the task. Nor was FEMA. Nor was the Department of Homeland Security. Our government failed. Until every aspect of our emergency response system is analyzed and reevaluated, this government will have a hard time finding its credibility in the debris.

I suggest that we should start trying to regain that credibility right here, today. This administration and this Congress and the agencies of this Federal bureaucracy concerned with emergencies like Katrina have a great debt to pay back to the American people. This Congress owes them more than a mere 40 minutes of consideration of the Nation's response to what is quickly becoming the worst national disaster in American history. We owe them more than to silence the voice of the American people on this floor. We owe America more than to intentionally prevent this body from crafting the very best hurricane recovery legislation that it can by refusing to allow any amendments to even be considered and by shutting out almost half of this House from any consideration of this bill.

And because this leadership does not want to lose a vote or have their ideas challenged or suffer the indignity of disagreement in the people's House, we will not be able to do a thorough discussion today. It is the very mentality, the arrogance of this government, its unwillingness to allow accountability to be brought into the process which they have reduced to a game. They call it the blame game. It is not a game, Mr. Speaker; it is a tragedy. We cannot afford to go on like this, not even for one more day.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), a member of the Rules Committee.

(Mr. HASTINGS of Florida asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), the ranking member on the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson), the ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security and a victim himself.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee).

(Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to note that we would be happy to come together if the Republicans will just tell the Democrats where the meeting is.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I will be asking Members to vote ``no'' on the previous question. If it is defeated, I will amend the rule to allow the House to consider an amendment by the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) to the emergency supplemental bill to reestablish the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a freestanding independent agency.

An amendment would do a number of important things to fix the problems with FEMA. It will reestablish it as an independent agency, allow the director to report directly to the President, require the director to have emergency response experience, limit the director's term to 5 years, and establish a deputy director for disaster relief.

Mr. Speaker, I know all of us in the House were truly stunned and horrified by the terrible and heartbreaking scenes from New Orleans and the other Gulf Coast States that unfolded last week. And to make matters even worse was the failure on the part of the White House and the lead Federal agency on disaster relief to take immediate action that might have saved hundreds of lives and alleviated the immense and immeasurable suffering that was inflicted on so many of our fellow Americans.

Members should be aware that a ``no'' vote will not in any way prevent the House from considering and approving the desperately needed supplemental for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. We all agree hurricane relief must happen immediately and it will happen today, but a ``no'' vote will let us debate the serious and urgent matter regarding FEMA's future ability to respond immediately and responsibly to any disaster that occurs on our soil so that we may never see such a thing again as we have witnessed with FEMA's work.

I urge Members to vote ``no'' on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my good friend, the gentleman from Florida, for yielding such time right now.

This is obviously a time of great emotional sadness for all of us, as we are attempting to help fellow Americans who are in a special need, a special time of need. It is a trying time; and, hopefully, it is one where we can keep focus on the true issue, which is how to get emergency relief as quickly as possible to people who desperately need it.

The rule that is being proposed here, and sometimes in our rhetoric on these rules we kind of go far afield from what the issue is, the issue is still the rule, does not prevent any kind of unanimous consent for more time for more issues to be raised at such time in the future, but it does provide a backup to guarantee that the issue at the end of this day will be decided and that relief money can be moved on without any kind of impediments or Congress trying to add extraneous issues to the debate or discussion, unless there is unanimous consent, obviously, for that.

There is precedent for what we are doing. This is not unusual. It has been done before. It will be done again in the future. It does, though, try to state that there is a time and a place for everything that we do. There is a time to try and pass emergency relief and get that relief moving as quickly as possible, to really hit what is human suffering.

This particular request deals with temporary assistance. It deals with providing temporary housing, money for home repairs, medical, dental costs, repair work, cleanup, ensuring that the firemen get their pay. It is emergency equipment.

Much of the discussion we have heard this morning deals with long- range policy issues. I am not saying they are bad, because that policy discussion needs to take place. It should take place. We need to determine what the city of New Orleans did well and what it did poorly; what the State of Louisiana did well, what it did poorly; what the Federal Government did well. We even need to discuss what the United States Congress has done well and poorly in this particular issue.

But those need to be discussed with dispassion in some way so that when we make broad policy decisions, those broad policy decisions can be made with a clear conscience and clear focus on what the issue really is. That takes regular order, and for some who would like to bypass regular order to quickly pass some of these, we are doing a disservice to long-term policy discussions.

The senior member of the Committee on Appropriations from Wisconsin is someone I have enjoyed listening to. He oftentimes will say those things which ring true. What he wants to discuss is significant, but it needs to be done in the regular order, not on top of this emergency bill; and I am sure that will take place.

Mr. Speaker, I would also be remiss if I did not take this opportunity just to say a few things that are positive. Though I do not know what has been happening throughout the entire world, I do know what has been happening in my backyard of Utah where some of these evacuees are presently residing. I guess the State of Utah took the Jazz; we should also take some of the evacuees at the same time.

In addition to those evacuees who are in my State, the State of Utah is also stepping up. There are in the State of Utah 475 volunteers who have been working since Saturday with these evacuees. They have done everything from having a child care center on site, to providing 6,000 meals, to even having a volunteer life guard manning the pool at the base at which these evacuees are staying. $2 million since Saturday have been donated in Salt Lake City as well; 7,000 people have called asking what they can do. Some of them have been very creative in what they are trying to do.

A Ronna Guidera who lives in Salt Lake City, and actually in Draper, went down there and took trips from the military base where the evacuees are staying into Salt Lake City for sightseeing, for shopping trips.

Steve Gordon had the idea of actually providing as many tickets as he can get to go to the Utah-Utah State game. It may not be what they necessarily wanted to see that Saturday, but it is the best game in town that we have to offer.

People are stepping up from their hearts for this disaster. It is also time for Congress to step up with their hearts and provide the temporary relief, and then use our minds to go back and discuss the policy issues and policy initiatives, but go through the regular order so that we do not jump to conclusions, we do not make mistakes as we go through.

All of these discussions are important, they are there, but the rule at hand is to get emergency relief on the floor to help people right now, and we should not lose sight of that in our efforts to try to expand it into other areas, legitimate discussion areas, but other areas that do not pertain specifically to this point at hand as to how we get that $50 billion to help people right here right now.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's indulgence. I appreciate the time. I support this rule because it is the right thing to do to help people right now and put everything in its proper perspective.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking Democrat of the Rules Committee for the time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the four bills which the House will consider today under suspension of the rules should this rule pass.

However, I also rise with great trepidation about the way in which the majority continues to run this body without regard for general order and procedure. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz- Balart) said that he is proud to be bringing this rule under the suspension provisions. I would ask the gentleman whether or not in his conference all of the T's were crossed and the I's were dotted to bring a matter out, since in your conference and in our caucus we have a provision that as a general measure we will not bring a matter under suspension for more than $100 million.

Under suspension of the rules, Members are afforded limited time for debate with zero opportunity to amend the legislation. When this rule passes, that is exactly what we will get. That is just wrong, regardless of the urgency of the legislation.

Mr. Speaker, this administration that is in charge of this Nation's negligence in responding to Hurricane Katrina strongly resembles the incompetence that Florida saw in the Federal emergency management organization last year. The Bush administration's refusal to accept responsibility for its inaction mirrors the arrogance that we continue to deal with today in Florida as we recover from last year's disastrous hurricane season.

Certainly our first priority has to be the rescue of those who are still alive and to provide them with housing, medical attention, food and water. However, as the Gulf Coast turns to the recovery and rebuilding process, the billions that Congress will spend will not be enough to fix the problems that exist within FEMA.

Based on my own personal experience dealing with Under Secretary Brown directly over the last year, I warn the Members of this body that the problems you see today are just the tip of the iceberg, as the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter) just said. And it has nothing to do with the magnitude of this awesome disaster.

My colleague says that he is proud. I wonder if my colleague from Florida is proud of the fact that $1.5 billion from last year's hurricanes are still outstanding. I wonder if my colleague is proud of the fact that his county, Dade, and my county, Broward, were denied Federal assistance from FEMA this year with this same Hurricane Katrina. I wonder if my colleague is proud of that fact that there are blue roofs in Florida where people's roofs are still not covered, and it does not even rise to the magnitude of what is going on in the Gulf Coast; but last year's FEMA problems are not corrected.

Inconsistency in FEMA regulations, constant reinterpretations of the Stafford Act, Federal officials treating local emergency operation centers like revolving doors, lack of coordination and FEMA's fluid and unclear chain of command are just a few of the many significant and real problems that Floridians dealt with last year and are still dealing with today.

I have literally begged the committee of jurisdiction in this body to hold hearings on these shortcomings. I even introduced bipartisan legislation in March with the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Shaw) to address a slew of institutional problems within FEMA that we experienced firsthand last year. Yet, every time we take our concerns to the committees, we are told it is not big enough as a problem to consider on its own.

Well, Mr. Speaker, is the problem big enough now? How many people must die in a disaster before something becomes a big enough problem in this Congress?

The new mantra that I hear from my colleagues in the majority is that there will be time to investigate. It is almost as if we cannot chew gum and walk at the same time. We must do what we are doing for the Gulf Coast, but we also must do what we have to as a responsibility in Congress in the nature of oversight.

Later today I will introduce legislation establishing an independent commission to examine the failures of the Federal Government in responding to Katrina, as well as evaluate our current ability to respond to any type of large-scale disaster, natural or man-made.

The President and congressional Republicans argue that we should not play the blame game because they may be in part to blame. Congress placing FEMA in the Department of Homeland Security and allowing the agency to operate completely unchecked helped create the disaster that we are in today. We created the problem, and now we need to fix it.

I question, however, whether there are enough in this body who have the courage to do what is right and not only criticize the administration, not only criticize local and State officials, criticize this Congress as well for our incompetence and inaction. But actually doing something is what is required. Accountability is the only way to restore integrity in a broken system, and an independent commission is the first step in repairing our disaster response system which we all now know is woefully inadequate.

Mr. Speaker, last week I returned to Washington along with about 20 other Members of the House in order to assure passage of the initial down payment of $10 billion for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Today we will be voting to provide $52 billion more in aid. I am all for it. We will all vote for it. Any suggestion in any way that the delivery of that money would be delayed is pure nonsense. That money will be voted today.

But the problem we have is that the bill is being brought to the floor in a manner which prevents Congress from exercising any independent judgment whatsoever about how best to use taxpayers' money. And the problem is that the agency that we are appropriating most of the money to has demonstrated with great clarity that it is spectacularly dysfunctional; and there are a number of reasons for that.

The problem we have with FEMA is that what was an efficient, professional and qualified agency under James Witt during the Clinton administration has now once again become a dumping ground for political cronies.

Three years ago this Congress in the wake of 9/11 merged FEMA into a huge, new, gargantuan agency, the Department of Homeland Security. Since that time the White House, the Congress, and the Department of Homeland Security all together have squeezed the resources available for FEMA. They have hollowed out that agency and they have cut more than 500 people out of that agency.

To top it off, the President appointed to run that agency a gentleman who before he joined FEMA had no previous disaster experience whatsoever, and whose only apparent connection to the disaster world was that he was the college roommate of the former director of FEMA. We have seen the disastrous results of that appointment.

I want to provide the $50 billion that the legislation is going to provide today, and I will vote for it and so will ever other sane Member of this House, I assume. But I deeply regret the fact that the manner in which this legislation is being brought to the floor today will prevent me or any other Member from taking an action which I think is essential to restore the professionalism of FEMA and to depoliticize that agency.

I wanted to offer an amendment to the bill which would have allowed the money to flow immediately, but which would have done five additional things. It would have restored FEMA status as an independent agency with no intervening bureaucracy between the White House and that agency, it would have reestablished the position of the FEMA director to one who reports directly to the President, it would have required the FEMA director to have extensive experience in emergency or disaster-related management, it would have made that directorship confirmable for a specific 5-year term to reduce the likelihood of the position being used as political patronage of any President by any party, and it would have established a deputy director with primary responsibility to assure that a direct connection is retained with the Department of Homeland Security so that in the process of dealing with domestic disasters, we do not neglect our responsibilities to also protect the country against terrorism.

Our friends on the majority side of the aisle declined to allow us to have that vote.

I do not object to the majority saying ``We do not believe that that is the right solution.'' or ``We do not believe that this is the right time to discuss this.'' That is a legitimate position. But what we are asking for is to at least have the ability to debate that issue, to discuss that issue, because every day that we delay professionalizing FEMA and depoliticizing it is another day that taxpayers' money is being spent by an agency which has been demonstrated under these circumstances to be incompetent.

The President has a responsibility, each and every Member of this Congress has a personal responsibility to see to it that if we are going to provide $50 billion today and another $50 billion down the road, as we most surely will, we have a responsibility to know that that money is going to be spent in the most efficient, the most effective way to save lives, to rebuild communities. We cannot have that confidence under the existing management of this agency. And so I think we have an obligation to move as quickly as possible to fix the problem.

The amendment I would have offered would have given us 120 days to make those changes. I regret deeply the fact that we will not be able to at least discuss that matter on the floor today.