Arctic Research and Policy Amendments Act of 2024

Madam President, I have come here periodically to speak about issues with the National Flood Insurance Program. I will today, but first I am going to talk about resiliency, environmental resiliency in particular. I am going to talk about acts of heroism; I am going to talk about North Carolina and South Carolina; and then I am going to end up with the National Flood Insurance Program.

Let's talk about resiliency. Hurricane Francine just hit my State, and where the Federal Government, State and local governments have invested and completed that investment in building resiliency, we did well. Our country did well.

From the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act by itself, $367 million has come to build flood control structures, and where those structures have been completed, they did not flood.

It reminded me of a couple of years ago when Hurricane Ida made a direct hit on New Orleans. I was with a mayor and a local elected official. We looked at each other, and one of them said: The ground is dry. Contrasting with Katrina when the levees failed and the whole city flooded, the mayor was making the point the ground is dry.

We can build resiliency. That is important for my State. It is important for your State, Madam President. It is important for our country. Wherever there is a threat of environmental disaster, with wise planning and public investment, we can build resiliency. That is the good news, and we saw that from Hurricane Francine.

But every now and then, there is still a need for heroism. So I would like to give just some recognition to some folks in my State who did some really positive things.

Folks from Louisiana have seen the story, heard the story of a guy named Miles Crawford, a nurse in New Orleans. In the middle of the storm, he gets a text from his brother. Someone had driven into the water and was sinking beneath the bridge. So the truck goes in, and then the truck begins to sink. Miles goes out there. It is on the TV. Somebody videoed it. He walks out there. I don't know how he broke the window, but he breaks the window, and the front is going down, but the person trapped inside comes out the back.

I say that because whenever we invest, there is always going to be something that slips through. And I want to give a shout-out to a fellow American who, in an act of heroism--by the way, there were firefighters down in what we call the bayou section. There were the utility linemen who went out after

the storm and quickly put the electricity back up.

But the point is that as much as we invest, still, we can look to individual Americans doing incredibly positive things for the sake of their fellow Americans. And I just want to give a shout-out to that. That will kind of lead into what I speak of in the National Flood Insurance Program.

By the way, it is not just Miles in Lafourche Parish. The sheriff's department saved a total of 26 people from rising waters. They got calls. They went out. They rescued. Heroism almost becomes routine.

Now, I am speaking of my State. It is easy to say: Oh, Louisiana floods. But let me talk about who else floods. The Carolinas have just had a rain event.

By the way, I mentioned Lafourche Parish, but this is Morgan City. So it was through our region that you see we had rain, but they were able to address it.

Now, this is Cherry Grove, SC. So rain events occur throughout our Nation.

I remember doing a reform for the National Flood Insurance Program when I was in the House of Representatives, and the Representative from New Mexico suddenly got on my bill. I said: Hey, man, what is happening?

He goes: We just had a rain event in our mountain and we had a gully washer and it flooded people in the gully.

There was a similar incident from Colorado. So this can be not just on a coastal plain, but it can also be in a riverine system, where there is a sudden gush of water, for whatever reason, and those who are in the valley of the river or the gully also flood.

Now, this is South Carolina. And I am using this to make the point that, one, you can build resiliency. As much as you build it, we still need people helping people.

And, by the way, this is not limited to Louisiana; it is across our Nation. And this picture just gives us the opportunity to make the point that this recent rain event--September 15, 2024, in the Carolinas--is something which is across our Nation, which brings me to the National Flood Insurance Program.

You know, we speak of building resiliency, but, still, we see either the resiliency has not been built or, for whatever other circumstance, there is still flooding. We see that we have these acts of heroism in which individuals help individuals. And, man, that is what makes America great.

We see that this is not just in Louisiana, but it is across our country. That is how we get to how fellow Americans help fellow Americans, not just by our brave firefighter, sheriff, or a nurse doing something at the moment but by wise public policy.

The wise public policy, as we have mentioned, is building resiliency, but it is also doing things like strengthening the National Flood Insurance Program to make it affordable, to make it accountable, and to make it sustainable. That should be our goal.

The National Flood Insurance Program was created for a moment like this. The water is beginning to recede, but you can see water is in here now. Those folks are going to have to pick up the pieces. It was an event that was unexpected. They are flooding, and now they need help from their fellow Americans. They purchased insurance. They have done their part. But we need wise public policy to make sure that that flood insurance is affordable when the high water comes.

The National Flood Insurance Program covers about 4.7 million Americans across our country. It enables people to rebuild when a flood destroys their home or just kind of washes out their belongings.

There are two challenges that we have in Congress regarding this program. We have to reauthorize it so it doesn't expire on September 30. My colleague Senator John Kennedy is sponsoring that straight-up reauthorization. That straight-up reauthorization is important for at least maintaining that minimum of coverage. But we also have to make it affordable again. Right now, it is unaffordable. It is unaffordable when it doesn't have to be unaffordable.

At the heart of the problem is something called Risk Rating 2.0. And Risk Rating 2.0 is a way in which FEMA is adjusting premiums, not to make sure that they are still affordable but to, basically, pay back a $20 billion debt that was accumulated after Hurricane Katrina and there were so many claims upon the system.

People in Louisiana consider that a little bit unjust. It was decided by a Federal judge that those levees failed in New Orleans because of a faulty design by the Army Corps of Engineers. But they failed. There are lots of claims, and now premiums are rising in an attempt to pay back that debt.

Now, as those premiums have increased, they have become too expensive for some who dropped their coverage because the premium is too expensive. But when the people who are least likely to flood drop their coverage, the risk is concentrated on fewer, which means the premium rises even more, premiums go even higher, and a few more drop off.

If we don't work to make this program affordable, it will enter what is called an actuarial death spiral where fewer and fewer are insured, the risk is concentrated on the remaining--which they cannot afford-- and the program falls apart. And this street is out of luck in Cherry Grove, SC, or perhaps in Lafourche Parish, LA, or perhaps even in a place in Nevada, where the Presiding Officer is from.

Forty-four States have had over $50 million in NFIP claims. Multiple States have had over $1 billion in NFIP claims since 1978. This is not just a local issue; this is a national issue.

And so my message to colleagues who represent--here you see it. Greater than $1 billion is the dark. Greater than $50 million is the in-between color between the light--notably, again, the Presiding Officer is from Nevada, which you think of as being a relatively arid State, but they have had over $50 million worth of claims in their State. But these have had over $1 billion.

So I am just asking colleagues to recognize that just as a firefighter, as a nurse, as a sheriff helps a neighbor in the middle of a trying time, the National Flood Insurance Program is a way that Americans help fellow Americans after a trying time. And wherever you see a color here, there are fellow Americans who have been helped by this program.

We are 12 days away from the September 30 expiration date. I would ask that we reauthorize and reform the National Flood Insurance Program before the opportunity has passed. Reauthorizing gives us time we need to find the right solution. We can reauthorize before the end of the year and find the right solution. It may be this Congress, it may be next Congress, but it is something that we must do. It must be bipartisan. It must reflect the interests of States across the Nation. But it is something that is the epitome of Americans helping fellow Americans.

I look forward to fellow Members and their staff speaking to my staff and I about this. Let's solve this problem.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I wanted to take just a couple of minutes here at the close of the evening to speak to an anniversary. Today is the 40th anniversary of the Arctic Research and Policy Act. It is known as ARPA. We use the acronym ``ARPA'' around here quite frequently. We talk about ARPA-E and ARPA-H.

But the original ARPA was the Arctic Research and Policy Act. It was legislation that was actually drafted by the previous Senator Murkowski from Alaska. It was one of the first pieces of legislation that Frank Murkowski introduced and got passed into law. It was signed by President Reagan. It was cosponsored by the likes of Ted Stevens and Scoop Jackson, Warren Magnuson; on the House side, Congressman Young.

It was significant in that it laid a foundation for the policies that we are seeing put in place today and over these past 40 years. It has been laying out much of the knowledge and the understanding and the policy for Alaska.

I talk a lot about the Arctic, coming from the State that makes us an Arctic nation, but I think it is important to recognize that many of our allies around the world--many of those who are not our friends around the world--are also talking about and taking a keen interest in the Arctic.

There is a lot of focus on this week because we are seeing levels of engagement from the Russians up in the Alaska ADIZ and the area in the high north. We have seen joint exercises with the Russians and the Chinese, both in the air and on the waters in our northern waters. There is a level of focus and intensity about what may be heating up in a cool place--not something that we like.

But it is important to recognize that when we speak about the Arctic, it is not just its geostrategic location on the globe that makes it such a key place for defense and strategic defense. It is the role that the Arctic plays when it comes to just the health of our planet. Some describe it as kind of the big thermostat up north. And we see down here on the east coast and parts of the country where, when you have Arctic weather coming down, pushing things in different directions, everything kind of goes out of whack. And we are all starting to pay attention to what is going on with the weather and where it is coming from.

Well, the science that comes to us in better understanding what is happening in the Arctic, much of this came about through the development of the Arctic Research and Policy Act.

So leading in these areas has been important for all the right reasons, whether it has been environmental; whether, again, it has been just from a geostrategic perspective; whether it has been a focus on the health and the well-being of indigenous peoples; whether it is understanding the extraordinary science that is unique to the area, understanding the impacts of a thawing permafrost and what that may mean, understanding the impacts within our ocean.

But it is also better understanding that geography. With the mapping that we have seen that has been spurred from both NOAA and USGS, we have been able to identify an area north of the shore of Alaska--an area, well, two times bigger than the State of California--that we identify as part of our Outer Continental Shelf, allowing us to submit claim to that territory.

The real-world advances that we are seeing in understanding more about the Arctic come about because of good legislation that began so many years ago.

There is a reception probably going on right now with many of those who have been involved with the U.S. Arctic Research Commission over the years and their partner Agencies. There are some 18 partner Agencies that participate. Several of the commissioners who have served currently and who have served in the past are present and are speaking about the contributions.

Two of the former commissioners, heads of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission--actually, both former Lieutenant Governors for the State of Alaska, Fran Ulmer and Mead Treadwell--came together and penned a joint op-ed that ran in the Anchorage Daily News last month. And I want to read just one paragraph from that op-ed because I think it really is a sum of what we have seen as a result of the framework from this law. It states:

Our nation's long-running Arctic research programs in . . .

NOAA and the . . . USGS provided the essential data to enable

America to recently claim new rights to an offshore land area

larger than two Californias. The law has added momentum to

efforts to build new, powerful icebreakers and to increase

our Arctic presence as Russia and China increase theirs. It

laid the groundwork for safe shipping and resource

development in the Arctic by identifying methods to reduce

risk. It helped evolve our understanding of continental

drift, and the plate tectonic evolution of the Arctic Ocean

basin. Arctic health research is informing policy to improve

health outcomes and to reduce disparities. Forty years of

purposeful, coordinated U.S. Arctic effort, involving

national resources, partners across the Arctic region, and

Alaskans is something to celebrate and take pride in.

So I just wanted to include just, again, a few short moments in the Congressional Record today about this anniversary, with a recognition that it is important to recognize the accomplishments of what we have built and the foundation that guides our science and informs our policy, which we use to benefit our people and our Nation.

But it also needs to be a push for us, an impetus to keep our foot on the gas,

so to speak, to keep moving forward, because we need to be more than a nation in the Arctic that has the title. We need to be that active participant. We need to be the leader in the Arctic space.

So what more does that mean? It means confirming our nominee to be the first-ever Ambassador-at-Large for Arctic Affairs, a gentleman by the name of Mike Sfraga, Dr. Mike Sfraga, who is currently the head of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. He has been nominated by the President. He has gone through the committee. We need to get him confirmed because of the immediacy of so many of these Arctic issues that are playing out now.

Every time we have national conferences and other Arctic ambassadors are there, there is a void in the U.S. space. We need to make progress on matters that have been longstanding. It has been decades now-- decades--that several of us have been working to advance progress on ratification of the Law of the Sea treaty. Some on my side still have a little bit of older history, at a time--actually, during the Reagan years--when there were some concerns about ratification. I think we have tried to address them over the years.

But the world has changed up there. When I say the world has changed, the world is opening up in the Arctic: the levels of commerce that we are seeing; again, the levels of engagement from a national security perspective; other countries--China--looking to the Arctic waters for resources there, whether it be fisheries or whether it be minerals. It has changed, and so our active participation as a member of that important treaty, I think, needs to be an imperative.

We have got to figure out icebreakers. We have got to do better. We have authorized six icebreakers. We have funded--we have appropriated to three, and we still have nothing, nothing that is moving forward fast enough to satisfy anybody out there.

Other nations are not sitting still while we are trying to literally get our act together on this. This is an area where we have to keep moving. We have to keep building out our Arctic infrastructure. We are moving forward with a deepwater port in Nome that is critically important.

There are other aspects of infrastructure that we cannot assume are in place, whether it is adequate housing, water, wastewater, broadband--all of the infrastructure that is so important to live in a cold and remote area--and then recognizing the situation of the people who live and work and raise their families there and have since time immemorial and want to do so for generations going forward, making sure we are paying attention to education, to healthcare, housing, economy, jobs.

So today I have introduced legislation that would amend the Arctic Research and Policy Act with the very fancy title ``Arctic Research Policy Amendments Act of 2024.'' I don't go for the big acronyms in the titles. What we are doing is we are broadening the scope of the act to account for the Arctic's increasing role in national homeland defense; to strengthen climate and environmental research; to establish an annual award for excellence in Arctic research--we need to support and recognize those who are doing great work; and then to reflect the essential role of the indigenous people, incorporating the wisdom and experience of those who have lived there for millennia.

So it is good to work with the Commission. They continue to do great work. It is something that I--I appreciate colleagues here also waking up to the fact that this is the age of the Arctic, and how we embrace it, how we embrace our leadership role, is critical.

Madam President, I wanted to take just a couple of minutes here at the close of the evening to speak to an anniversary. Today is the 40th anniversary of the Arctic Research and Policy Act. It is known as ARPA. We use the acronym ``ARPA'' around here quite frequently. We talk about ARPA-E and ARPA-H.

But the original ARPA was the Arctic Research and Policy Act. It was legislation that was actually drafted by the previous Senator Murkowski from Alaska. It was one of the first pieces of legislation that Frank Murkowski introduced and got passed into law. It was signed by President Reagan. It was cosponsored by the likes of Ted Stevens and Scoop Jackson, Warren Magnuson; on the House side, Congressman Young.

It was significant in that it laid a foundation for the policies that we are seeing put in place today and over these past 40 years. It has been laying out much of the knowledge and the understanding and the policy for Alaska.

I talk a lot about the Arctic, coming from the State that makes us an Arctic nation, but I think it is important to recognize that many of our allies around the world--many of those who are not our friends around the world--are also talking about and taking a keen interest in the Arctic.

There is a lot of focus on this week because we are seeing levels of engagement from the Russians up in the Alaska ADIZ and the area in the high north. We have seen joint exercises with the Russians and the Chinese, both in the air and on the waters in our northern waters. There is a level of focus and intensity about what may be heating up in a cool place--not something that we like.

But it is important to recognize that when we speak about the Arctic, it is not just its geostrategic location on the globe that makes it such a key place for defense and strategic defense. It is the role that the Arctic plays when it comes to just the health of our planet. Some describe it as kind of the big thermostat up north. And we see down here on the east coast and parts of the country where, when you have Arctic weather coming down, pushing things in different directions, everything kind of goes out of whack. And we are all starting to pay attention to what is going on with the weather and where it is coming from.

Well, the science that comes to us in better understanding what is happening in the Arctic, much of this came about through the development of the Arctic Research and Policy Act.

So leading in these areas has been important for all the right reasons, whether it has been environmental; whether, again, it has been just from a geostrategic perspective; whether it has been a focus on the health and the well-being of indigenous peoples; whether it is understanding the extraordinary science that is unique to the area, understanding the impacts of a thawing permafrost and what that may mean, understanding the impacts within our ocean.

But it is also better understanding that geography. With the mapping that we have seen that has been spurred from both NOAA and USGS, we have been able to identify an area north of the shore of Alaska--an area, well, two times bigger than the State of California--that we identify as part of our Outer Continental Shelf, allowing us to submit claim to that territory.

The real-world advances that we are seeing in understanding more about the Arctic come about because of good legislation that began so many years ago.

There is a reception probably going on right now with many of those who have been involved with the U.S. Arctic Research Commission over the years and their partner Agencies. There are some 18 partner Agencies that participate. Several of the commissioners who have served currently and who have served in the past are present and are speaking about the contributions.

Two of the former commissioners, heads of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission--actually, both former Lieutenant Governors for the State of Alaska, Fran Ulmer and Mead Treadwell--came together and penned a joint op-ed that ran in the Anchorage Daily News last month. And I want to read just one paragraph from that op-ed because I think it really is a sum of what we have seen as a result of the framework from this law. It states:

Our nation's long-running Arctic research programs in . . .

NOAA and the . . . USGS provided the essential data to enable

America to recently claim new rights to an offshore land area

larger than two Californias. The law has added momentum to

efforts to build new, powerful icebreakers and to increase

our Arctic presence as Russia and China increase theirs. It

laid the groundwork for safe shipping and resource

development in the Arctic by identifying methods to reduce

risk. It helped evolve our understanding of continental

drift, and the plate tectonic evolution of the Arctic Ocean

basin. Arctic health research is informing policy to improve

health outcomes and to reduce disparities. Forty years of

purposeful, coordinated U.S. Arctic effort, involving

national resources, partners across the Arctic region, and

Alaskans is something to celebrate and take pride in.

So I just wanted to include just, again, a few short moments in the Congressional Record today about this anniversary, with a recognition that it is important to recognize the accomplishments of what we have built and the foundation that guides our science and informs our policy, which we use to benefit our people and our Nation.

But it also needs to be a push for us, an impetus to keep our foot on the gas,

so to speak, to keep moving forward, because we need to be more than a nation in the Arctic that has the title. We need to be that active participant. We need to be the leader in the Arctic space.

So what more does that mean? It means confirming our nominee to be the first-ever Ambassador-at-Large for Arctic Affairs, a gentleman by the name of Mike Sfraga, Dr. Mike Sfraga, who is currently the head of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. He has been nominated by the President. He has gone through the committee. We need to get him confirmed because of the immediacy of so many of these Arctic issues that are playing out now.

Every time we have national conferences and other Arctic ambassadors are there, there is a void in the U.S. space. We need to make progress on matters that have been longstanding. It has been decades now-- decades--that several of us have been working to advance progress on ratification of the Law of the Sea treaty. Some on my side still have a little bit of older history, at a time--actually, during the Reagan years--when there were some concerns about ratification. I think we have tried to address them over the years.

But the world has changed up there. When I say the world has changed, the world is opening up in the Arctic: the levels of commerce that we are seeing; again, the levels of engagement from a national security perspective; other countries--China--looking to the Arctic waters for resources there, whether it be fisheries or whether it be minerals. It has changed, and so our active participation as a member of that important treaty, I think, needs to be an imperative.

We have got to figure out icebreakers. We have got to do better. We have authorized six icebreakers. We have funded--we have appropriated to three, and we still have nothing, nothing that is moving forward fast enough to satisfy anybody out there.

Other nations are not sitting still while we are trying to literally get our act together on this. This is an area where we have to keep moving. We have to keep building out our Arctic infrastructure. We are moving forward with a deepwater port in Nome that is critically important.

There are other aspects of infrastructure that we cannot assume are in place, whether it is adequate housing, water, wastewater, broadband--all of the infrastructure that is so important to live in a cold and remote area--and then recognizing the situation of the people who live and work and raise their families there and have since time immemorial and want to do so for generations going forward, making sure we are paying attention to education, to healthcare, housing, economy, jobs.

So today I have introduced legislation that would amend the Arctic Research and Policy Act with the very fancy title ``Arctic Research Policy Amendments Act of 2024.'' I don't go for the big acronyms in the titles. What we are doing is we are broadening the scope of the act to account for the Arctic's increasing role in national homeland defense; to strengthen climate and environmental research; to establish an annual award for excellence in Arctic research--we need to support and recognize those who are doing great work; and then to reflect the essential role of the indigenous people, incorporating the wisdom and experience of those who have lived there for millennia.

So it is good to work with the Commission. They continue to do great work. It is something that I--I appreciate colleagues here also waking up to the fact that this is the age of the Arctic, and how we embrace it, how we embrace our leadership role, is critical.

Madam President, I rise in support of the BASIC Act, which I introduced today.

I know how important it is to help students cover the full cost of attending college, including tuition and fees, housing, food, transportation, books, childcare, healthcare, supplies, and more.

In California, even though State and institutional aid programs cover full tuition and fees for about half of the students attending California State University, University of California, and California Community College, students struggle to pay for the remaining cost of attendance. This bill will help accelerate California's work to make college affordable and provide funding to reach more schools across California and our nation.

Last year, the first-ever nationally representative data on student basic needs was released by the National Center for Education Statistics, which indicated that nearly one in four undergraduate students across the country experiences food insecurity. We also know that rates of basic needs insecurity are much higher for historically marginalized students, including Black, Latino, and Indigenous students; parenting students; LGBTQIA+students; first-generation students; Pell Grant recipients; former foster youth; and justice- involved students.

The evidence is clear that addressing student basic needs prevents students from sacrificing their health and well-being to succeed in higher education.

That is why I am proud to introduce this bill to authorize $1 billion for a new grant program to help institutions of higher education meet students' basic needs.

This funding represents an essential aspect of building more equitable paths to higher education, and it represents an investment in our students, our institutions, and our future. The legislation also helps coordinate assistance across Federal Agency lines.

I want to thank Senator Warren and Representative Torres for introducing this bill with me, and I hope our colleagues will join us in ensuring that no student is forced to choose between their education and their basic needs.