Expressing the sincere gratitude of the House of Representatives to the foreign individuals, organizations, and governments that have offered material assistance and other forms of support to those who have been affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time, and I appreciate him and the gentleman from Wisconsin working together on this package and bringing it to the floor. It is incredibly important to a lot of people that are suffering.

I have to begin my remarks by telling a little bit about myself and what I have been doing, to give you an idea that I know from what I speak. I was raised on the gulf coast. I have been through many hurricanes. I have watched responses to many hurricanes. I have watched the ability to respond to many hurricanes. I understand what the response is supposed to be.

I also in this particular case come from Houston, Texas, and I am incredibly proud of my fellow citizens in the Houston-Galveston region in opening their arms and their compassion and wallets and resources and homes to those that are in need, especially our brothers and sisters from Louisiana.

But we also consider that the third disaster. The first disaster was the hurricane, the second disaster was the floods in New Orleans, and the third disaster was what do you do with over 2 million people in a very short period of time? And in just days, Houston put together a virtual city for 60,000 people.

Then I went through the same frustrations that many of those on the ground in New Orleans and Mississippi and Louisiana and Alabama went through, because you are dealing with the same things; you are dealing with the same people, FEMA, the Federal Government, State government, city government, all governments, and you run into the same frustrations.

So, as is normal about me, I decided to do something about these frustrations, and I went to Baton Rouge where the control center was. I wanted to see the organization, the system, how was it working, what was going on on the ground.

I get into Baton Rouge, and I quickly realize that Baton Rouge was the biggest brunt of the third disaster because Baton Rouge, which I think is a city of about 500,000 people, all of a sudden saw within one day their population double. Double. And yet they were able to handle it. Sure, there were problems. Sure, there was suffering. But Baton Rouge citizens opened their arms and brought these people in. That was the first place that people could come, coming out of New Orleans.

Then from there they went to Lafayette, and they received another big brunt of the third disaster, and they handled it. Sure, there were frustrations all over the place and there was, frankly, a breakdown in the system.

The system is designed, if it works properly, from the bottom up. The system depends on the local government, whether it be mayor or county, dealing with whatever disaster problem they have; and when they find out they cannot deal with it, they go to the next level of government, to the Governor and to the State to help them out. And then when neither the State nor the locals can deal with it, they come to the Federal Government.

That is how the system is supposed to work. That is how it is set up. And when that breaks down, everything breaks down because we have to realize that every hour is absolutely precious after a disaster. I have seen this my entire life. Every hour certain things have to happen. But when we have a situation where people will not make a decision, we have lost that hour and we are into the next hour, and then we have to circle around and come back into the first hour to clean up the mess while we are trying to handle and catch up to the other hours. And then when it really starts breaking down, entire chaos happens. And in this case, it was not entire chaos. I would describe it as organized chaos. It was pretty messy.

Now, you can look at this disaster two different ways. You can offer nothing constructive except blaming when people need services at the moment and you spend your time and your caring time pointing fingers or making assumptions or calling for complete changes in government, and you spend all your time and energy focused on that.

Or you can understand that there are problems when we have 2 million people or we have three States in dire need as if they were at war and deal with the problems and the frustrations at that time that we find them and find answers immediately and move forward and find ways to fix them and find ways to take care of these people, find them the clothes, the shoes, the diapers, the food, the water, find them the cots that they need, find them the health care system that they need, find them a military officer or a wonderful soldier to go down and pull them out of a house, find them the Coast Guard helicopter to go and pull them off the top of the house, find the wherewithal in just a day or so to plug up the levees. I mean, you can either point your finger or you can see what happened.

The mirror of America that I saw was the most incredible outpouring of America that I have seen in my lifetime. All over this country, all over this country, people immediately got trucks and filled them up and drove 2,000 miles. One of our own Members did that from Nevada. Two thousand miles. This happened all over the country. Bringing supplies, bringing their hearts, bringing themselves and putting themselves in harm's way, especially in the case of New Orleans. I mean, it was unbelievable.

Our first responders from all over the Nation are down in Mississippi and Louisiana and Alabama. People are opening their doors to the people that need it. Can the Members imagine, and I do not know exactly what the total population of the disaster is, but I would imagine it is around 4 million people, 4 or 5 million people, but this country absorbed 4 to 5 million people overnight. That is an incredible accomplishment. And we ought to be proud of that. And what are we doing in Washington? We are pointing fingers. We are talking about process. We are doing the things that, frankly, disgust people when they see it on television.

Now, we have chosen to push that all aside because there is plenty of time for that later. What is important right now, I mean we are not even out of the save-the-life phase. We still have people in New Orleans that we are finding and pulling out of these houses.

The next phase is called the recovery phase, and we are sort of in that in certain parts of the country, especially in Mississippi and in Alabama. We ought to be focused on that. These people are out in these shelters. Can the Members imagine, in the Astrodome. Look at your television. There are 10,000 people or more on the floor of the Astrodome living next to each other. That is unsustainable. We have to do something with these people. We have to give them hope for the rest of their lives. They are asking the question, What do I do tomorrow? And we have to give them that answer. What do I do next week? What do I do a month from now? How do I get my kids in school? Where do I find my wife? In some cases, where do I find my pet, my dog? What do I do tomorrow? I have no money. My bank is closed. This hit me at the end of the month, and I am out of money. What do I do?

We have got the answer because we are focused on answering those questions. We are focused on giving them

the relief that they need. We have to give them the relief they need so that they can start planning their lives. One does not sit around after a disaster and not have some way of knowing how they are going to get back into a house, how they are going to be able to have a little privacy.

They are living on the floor of the Astrodome with 16,000 other people. There is no privacy on the floor of the Astrodome. They have got to have some way of knowing what is going to happen to them tomorrow. We have focused on that. And bringing this bill to the floor pays for a lot of it.

I know the American people, some of them, are worrying about all this money. Mr. Speaker, 5 million people, 5 million Americans, deserve our finding a way to make them whole. We are not even asking to make them whole. That was a misstatement. What we are asking is to give them a little hope over the next few weeks so that we can take care of their needs and get them back up and running again.

Now, some would say we need to take over their lives and dictate to them and tell them what to do and put them back. That is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about the very essentials that we need for the recovery process and the beginning of the rebuilding process. And it is expensive because there are a lot of people, and there was an incredible amount of damage.

We are not just writing a blank check. We have got some safeguards. We have got safeguards built into this bill, and we have got safeguards built into the law that already exists so that they can only spend money on things that should be spent on and not be frivolous about it and throw it away. Sure, there is going to be wasted money. We cannot deal with 5 million people and not waste some money. But the bulk of the money is going to go to the people and the process and the property that deserve it to get back on their feet.

This is incredibly important, and it is too important to play politics with. It is too important to point fingers at. It is too important to second-guess. It is easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, but you should have been in that control room where those people were making life and death decisions, people that stayed up and got no sleep and very little food for 5 to 6 days straight trying to make the right decisions to save people.

And what happens when we come up here? They point the finger. You did not make the right decision here. You did not take care of needs there. You did not do this; you did not do that. The point is if we look at the big picture, it is a phenomenal accomplishment by everybody involved. It is unbelievable. I am constantly struck by where we are today, just a little over a week from the worst catastrophe that this country has seen, I guess, certainly in recent history. We ought to be proud about that; and, most importantly, we should be proud of ourselves. We should be proud of our American brothers and sisters.

Mr. Speaker, this is indeed a solemn occasion for Congress, when we come together to help people in our country who have suffered greatly in a way that will take a very long time to repair. What they expect of us is for us to perform our Federal role in a manner that would honor the social compact between the Federal Government and the people in need in our country.

I just heard on the news, and it is very sobering, that about 14 bodies were found at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans. Last night we heard that 30 bodies were found at the nursing home there as well. These, and many, many other deaths, are a sad tragedy for our country, for those people, of course, and for their families. So it would be my hope that we could send out the best possible message to the people of our country, that the Congress is coming together in the manner that we did after 9/11 to work in a nonpartisan way, a bipartisan way, to help meet their needs.

We had an opportunity to do that today. Sadly, it was a missed opportunity, because there was not a chance for amendment to the legislation that is on the floor now. The opportunity would have been there to subject FEMA to the scrutiny that it should be subjected to and to take action to correct the situation.

FEMA is the link between the Federal Government and the American people and the social compact. Unfortunately, this time it was a weak link. But there is something that can be done about it. It can be moved from the Department of Homeland Security to be an independent agency, as it was before; and it could have the proper leadership running FEMA.

I call upon the President to remove Michael Brown, the current director, and put in there a person of capability and credentials, perhaps someone from the military who knows organization and leadership, not someone who has absolutely no credentials for the job. This is important. It is not a question of criticizing, it is a question of changing the situation so that we can better meet the needs of the people who are suffering out there, and to do it before we have more unnecessary suffering.

I believe that we had two disasters: one, a natural one; the second one, a man-made disaster, a disaster made by the mistakes of FEMA following Hurricane Katrina.

This is something we can do immediately. This is something we can do immediately because here we are on the floor of Congress appropriating $50 billion to an agency which has a record of poor performance and a leadership without qualifications for the job. If you need any further evidence of the lack of performance, you need only look to last week.

So why could we not have had legislation come to the committee of jurisdiction, the committee of the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis), and the ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), where the considerable talent on both sides of the aisle could have subjected this request to scrutiny, how is this money being sent, what is the accountability of it?

This is $50 billion on top of $10.5 billion last week, which was brought to the floor with 5 minutes of debate on each side. That is all that was allowed before the bill was voted on. What are we afraid of? What are we afraid of? What is this Congress afraid of, that we will not allow our congressional committees to review the request, to establish accountability, to bring its expertise to bear on it?

So, obviously we are all going to vote for this. It is very, very important for people to understand that whatever our differences on how the money gets to them that those differences do not stand in the way of probably what will be a unanimous vote in this House. But it is a lot of money, and it is not the end. We will be having more requests from the administration, I am sure, and when we do, I hope that they will have the confidence in their request to send their request to the committee of jurisdiction, so that there can be appropriate congressional review, public comment and, again, the accountability and oversight that Congress has the responsibility to perform.

This is a democracy, the United States of America, the greatest democracy in the history of the world, and we are being governed by decree. The President decides on a figure, he sends it over, we do not even get a chance to look at it much before we are called upon to vote on it, again bypassing the committees of jurisdiction. I cannot imagine that is okay with the Committee on Appropriations. As a long-time member of the committee, I certainly hope it is not.

But the bigger issue, the bigger issue, is how we do the job for the American people. In order to do that job, there are so many people who are so much more important than Members of Congress in all of this: public employees, firefighters, police officers, health care professionals, public and private sector people out there, who are great heroes, great heroes. They saved lives, and some of them gave their lives to help others.

Responding to the Gospel of this past Sunday, the 23rd Sunday after Easter, the Gospel of Matthew about the commandment where Matthew says, ``the greatest of these is love, to love thy neighbor as thyself.'' We will be tested on these as we go ahead to see if we are smart enough to help people in a way that enables them to take control of their lives as soon as possible.

We have proposals the Democrats would have liked to offer today to cut the red tape, to improve the performance of FEMA, for there to be job creation in the region, to stop price gouging at the pump for gasoline and to have qualified, qualified, leadership in the roles.

So this is all a question of our judgment. Is the performance that we saw last week up to standard for us? I do not think so, because it did not meet the needs of the American people.

When we are little, I think it was high school, but now it is probably grade school, that children are reading John Donne, ``No Man is an Island,'' ``For Whom the Bell Tolls.'' But I thought of it so much as we see these lasting impressions of Mississippi, just obliterated on its coastline, and New Orleans inundated and Alabama so affected, and even parts of Florida, and the incredible generosity of all of the States receiving evacuees as guests in their State.

I think the optimism, the goodness, the compassion of the American people is the greatest force for good in our country, and God bless them for their goodness.

But, again, for whom the bell tolls, as we look at the tragedy in the gulf coast States, it is clear that we are seeing a mirror of our country; and if ever there was an occasion where the bell was tolling and we would ask the question for whom the bell tolls, it does toll for each and every one of us, because every one of those deaths does diminish, as the poem goes, every one of us.

So I hope the families in America know that the staggering numbers are just appalling to us, but we think of them one family at a time and want to make decisions that address their needs one family at a time.

Mr. Speaker, with that, I will vote for this. I would hope, again, that future appropriations requests for Katrina will be presented in a timely fashion that will enable us to review them, to have some accountability from FEMA on how this money is spent, so that we can honor our oath of office that we take to protect and defend the Constitution, yes, but to provide for the safety of the American people.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this legislation, and I urge all of my colleagues to do so.

The United States is the largest provider of humanitarian assistance in this world. Whether in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch or the devastation of the Asian tsunami, the United States and our military have been in the front lines of responding to the needs of starving and destitute victims of nature's fury. It is only fitting, therefore, Mr. Speaker, that when we face devastation from a deadly hurricane that overwhelmed our own disaster plans, countries around the globe should respond to our own needs with offers of assistance.

Let me join my colleagues on the other side of the aisle in expressing our gratitude for these offers.

I am not, however, satisfied with the reception of these offers by some branches of our own government. I want to commend Secretary Rice and the Department of State for making significant and successful efforts to catalog these offers from abroad, but we learned from press reports that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was unable to process them and to determine what would be of assistance and what would not. Let me give my colleagues an example.

The Swedish Government has offered water purification equipment. No item is more desperately needed in Louisiana than water purification equipment. They have also offered a cellular phone network which could have done much to ease the communications challenges on the gulf coast. As of yesterday, these offered items remain in Sweden.

It took a week for our government to accept the offer of four Canadian rescue vessels.

A German communications company was willing to provide an integrated satellite and cellular phone system that could handle 5,000 calls at once. The company waited for days for any response.

This area is just one more example of the failures of executive agencies tasked with disaster relief in responding to this, the greatest natural disaster ever to confront our Nation.

It is simply shameful that FEMA did not realize the scope of this disaster and failed to trigger its most significant response until the end of the day when the levees broke in New Orleans. It is simply shameful that there was not a way for FEMA to accept offers of assistance from our own military as well as citizen States across the Nation. It is simply shameful that the poor and the sick and the elderly were left without supplies and protection from the marauding gangs that seeped in and around New Orleans.

I am sure that there is plenty of blame to go around in unraveling the bureaucratic bungling that contributed to this unacceptable response, but one thing, Mr. Speaker, is clear: FEMA's leadership failed, and I call on its director to resign today.

Let us find a better way to accept offers of assistance from our friends abroad, from our fellow citizens, and from our own military.

In order to address all these shortcomings, I strongly urge the appointment of a truly independent bipartisan commission made up of public figures of distinction and integrity and experts on disaster relief to investigate the failures that have cost the lives of so many. An investigation launched by the administration or dominated by one party will never be able to get to the bottom of what went wrong. We cannot afford such a flawed investigation. We need to get this right.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support this resolution.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of House Resolution 428, expressing the sincere gratitude of the House of Representatives to the foreign individuals, organizations, and governments that have offered material assistance and other forms of support to those who have been affected by Hurricane Katrina. To date, I understand that some 95 countries have come forward with offers of assistance.

Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest nations, offered $1 million in aid.

Thailand--still mourning its 8,000 missing and dead people after the tsunami--offered 60 nurses and shipments of rice.

Israel, the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, is returning the favor by donating tents and first-aid kits.

Oil-wealthy nations, such as Kuwait, have offered over $500 million in oil and relief.

European nations, such as Spain, have focused on sending military and rescue gear.

Both Djibouti and Georgia, relatively smaller countries, have offered $50,000 each.

Sri Lanka, the small country off the coast of Africa and one that is about $600 million in debt, offered $25,000 in cash.

There has been some criticism that we have been slow to accept the offers pouring in. The fact is that our greatest challenge has been to match the generous offers with the needs of the American people. The last thing we need is for someone to offer us assistance that can't really be utilized. For example, Russia, made us offers and our State Department told the Russians what we needed most urgently were MREs, (Meals-Ready-to-Eat), so they sent us MREs. We did the same thing with Germany. We took the MREs.

The first aid we took, because, as the President said, it was the easiest to manage was cash. And the cash donations came in and quickly went out to Red Cross and others.

As Chairman of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, I would like to particularly acknowledge the outpouring of sympathy and solidarity we have witnessed from our friends and neighbors in Latin America. All the figures are still being compiled but I'd like to highlight a few examples, but by no means all examples of the support we have received from our friends in the Western Hemisphere.

Honduras has offered to send 135 flooding and sanitation experts.

Peru has offered to send a medical team of up to 100 members.

A Mexican ship loaded with supplies set sail Monday from the Gulf Coast port of Tampico.

Venezuela has offered 1 million barrels of gasoline, $5 million in cash and more than 50 tons of canned food and water.

Even Cuba has offered to send 1,100 doctors, and;

The Organization of American States approved the contribution of the maximum amount allowed under the statutes of the Inter-American Emergency Assistance Fund, and the establishment of a specific fund for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

These are just a few examples of the aid being offered. What is most important to remember in this situation is not the actual amount of aid offered, who offered what, and who may have offered nothing; what is important to remember, is the willingness of other nations, big and small, to come and give while we are vulnerable. It is important to appreciate the principle behind the gift.

In closing, I want to offer my personal thanks to the entire international community for their help, their thoughts and their prayers for the people of the United States who have suffered and lost friends and loved ones in this terrible tragedy. The spirit of compassionate generosity and solidarity that we have witnessed from the international community is extremely comforting and gives me great hope for the future.

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

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3673) making further emergency supplemental appropriations to meet immediate needs arising from the consequences of Hurricane Katrina, for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2005, and for other purposes.

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

Mr. Speaker, it was less than 1 week ago that Congress approved $10.5 billion in disaster aid to begin providing immediate assistance to the people of the gulf coast. That emergency supplemental bill was the first of what will likely be several supplementals addressing the urgent needs of our citizens affected by Hurricane Katrina.

I plan to be very brief in my remarks.

The human needs in the gulf region are all too apparent. The President has promised an unprecedented level of assistance and, once again, Congress is backing that promise with the funding and resources to keep the aid flowing.

This is a straightforward supplemental providing $51.8 billion for emergency response and recovery needs associated with this disaster. Our effort today will ensure that there is no disruption in funding for needed relief efforts. We fully expect to be approving still more assistance once we have an assessment of the full scope and costs of this disaster.

It is important for our Members to know that we are insisting on proper oversight for those appropriated dollars to ensure that funds are being spent wisely. Specifically, we have added a provision allowing the transfer of up to $15 million from FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund to the Homeland Security inspector general. Congress also will provide that every dollar needed is spent to rebuild, but we will require accountability for every dollar that is spent.

The destruction along the gulf coast will require months and even years of intense effort to recover and rebuild. Congress and the Bush administration are fully committed to the rebuilding process.

One final thought in closing. I recall vividly the scene of Republicans and Democrats standing on the steps of the Capitol singing ``God Bless America'' on the evening of September 11, 2001. We stood not as partisans or political opponents, but as American citizens united in our grief and resolve. We would all do well to follow that model of comity and civility. Our success in rebuilding in the wake of this natural disaster demands that we tone down our political rhetoric and weigh our words and actions carefully.

The lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people are at stake. The temptation to point fingers is great in the aftermath of a tragedy of this magnitude. Regardless of party affiliation, we must all resist this temptation to point fingers when our citizens are suffering and in need. There will be plenty of time to assess how and why this disaster occurred, but not today, not now. We must stand together as we did on 9/11, united as Americans, to assist our citizens in need.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Alexander).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Boustany).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), a member of our committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bonner).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Homeland Security.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to mention, as I did in my opening statement, that we have changed this a bit by adding $15 million to make sure our inspector general is assisting us in making sure that every dollar that will be spent, and it is necessary to help those people who have been affected by this tragedy, that indeed it is our intention to ensure to the American public that every dollar is spent well.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Manzullo).

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I first want to say that I appreciate the gentleman bringing this to our attention, as chairman of the Committee on Small Business. Indeed, I will be happy to continue working with the gentleman over time regarding this matter, and I look forward to that effort.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah), a member of the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).

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

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

Mr. Speaker, as I go about introducing my final speaker, I was very impressed by the gentlewoman's comments and her willingness to work in a bipartisan way regarding the challenge ahead of us.

I wanted to mention to her we have been looking very seriously at the problems in the region of the gulf for a long time. In the last 5 years, the Congress has appropriated some $1.9 billion for flood control in Louisiana. I might mention only $1.4 billion has been appropriated for all of California, seven times the population. So we have been truly focusing upon that region.

Just last Friday, as you know, we passed a $10.5 billion package for this immediate crisis, and today we have over a $50 billion package before us. So the Congress is attempting to focus upon this very real challenge.

I am very happy that the gentlewoman recognizes that we do need to work together in terms of finding the why of all of this, but right now it is most important to respond to the challenges and needs of the American people in danger.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the majority leader of the House.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

My colleague from Minnesota (Mr. Sabo) a moment ago cited the plight of elementary and secondary schoolchildren and the need to invest in education requirements to help them through this traumatic period. My area in our Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure is the highways, the bridges, the water and sewer systems, the port facilities, the Coast Guard and, indeed, FEMA itself. We should understand, as I said last Friday on passage of the first increment, that this is a down payment. That $10.5 billion was a down payment. This $52 billion is a down payment on the needs of the gulf, the need for restoration of the wetlands, the buffers that slow the advance of storms, that prevent the erosion of the coastline.

But there is also a need to restore the buoys in the harbor, to replot the sandbars and the channels in the harbor and the riverway. There is a need to invest more in the Corps of Engineers to reevaluate the levees and the protective systems, the riprap along the coast of the river banks of the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain.

The causeway is under severe difficulty. The roadways throughout the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama gulf areas are in serious difficulty. The storm surge has taken those out. We are going to need a huge investment in highways, bridges, water and sewer and sewage treatment facilities in the city of New Orleans and in other communities.

Our committee stands ready to address those issues, but we will need a comprehensive plan to address these issues, and I urge the Committee on Appropriations and the Office of Management and Budget to address that very issue of laying out a plan, so we think constructively into the future.

Parallel to the tragedy of human and physical disruption in the aftermath of Katrina, is the obvious disarray of the Federal Government's response. FEMA should have been in charge--but they didn't seem to be. For a long while, no Federal agency appeared to be in charge, coordinating the recovery efforts.

I predicted that this would happen when the Department of Homeland Security was created, with FEMA included in it. I argued against the inclusion of FEMA and offered an amendment to delete FEMA from the proposed new department during floor consideration of the DOHS bill.

I include at this point in the Record my remarks from the Record of July 25, 2002, in support of my amendment.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of

my time.

Mr. Chairman, the Brookings Institution studied this

proposal for a Department of Homeland Security and reached

the same conclusion as former FEMA Director James Lee With

with this observation:

``There is very little day-to-day synergy between the

preventive and protective functions of the border and

transportation security entities in the Department and the

emergency preparedness and response functions a consolidated

FEMA contributes. There is, therefore, little to be gained in

bringing these very different entities under the same

organizational roof. And the costs are not insignificant.

``FEMA,'' the report says, ``would likely become less

effective in performing its current mission in case of

natural disasters, as time, effort, and attention are

inevitably diverted to other tasks within the larger

organization.''

Prior to the time when we enacted the Stafford Act which

statutorily established FEMA in 1979, after we had shed its

disaster, civil defense role, the Federal Government had had

no coordinated or effective response to natural disasters,

but FEMA became that response agency.

Now, if we move this really effective agency into a big

bureaucracy, we know what happens. We all know in this

Chamber what happens when a small agency gets into a big

department and the big appetite for more money to be shuffled

around with fungible dollars that can go from one agency to

the next and suddenly, FEMA's will just dissipate and fritter

away.

Mr. Chairman, I am in the enviable position of rising in

support of the unanimous position of the Committee on

Transportation and Infrastructure in reporting out our

responsibilities toward homeland security, and that is the

committee reported out recommendation to keep FEMA as an

independent agency.

All right. This is July 2002. Let us fast forward to July

2003. The majority has prevailed. FEMA is a box in the

mammoth bureaucracy of the Department of Homeland Security.

Flood waters are swirling around your city. You call for

help. You get the Department of Homeland Security. The

switchboard sends your call to the Under Secretary's office

which looks up ``disaster'' on their organizational chart and

sends you to the Congressional Liaison Office, which then

promises to get a message back to you in 24 hours.

Eventually, they find FEMA, by which time you are stranded on

the roof of your house waving a white handkerchief and

screaming for help. FEMA, the word comes back, sorry, is

looking for suspected terrorists some place in the hinterland

of America and will get back to you as soon as we can.

This Department of Homeland Security is a bureaucracy in

search of a mission. Do not give them FEMA's mission. It is

too important to waste on this misguided department. There is

that old barnyard saying, ``if it ain't broke, don't fix

it.'' FEMA ain't broke. Don't fix it by ruining it and

sending it into the Department of Homeland Sccurity. It is

nimble, quick, lean, effective as an independent agency

today. Keep it that way. Help your city, help your State,

help yourself, help your firefighter by keeping FEMA as an

independent. agency where it belongs and has been effective.