Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, prior to Hurricane Katrina, the hottest topic on the Mississippi gulf coast was a proposed ban on drilling 12 miles out, and that has kind of been put on hold. But anywhere from champions of industry who actually own shipyards that repair drilling rigs are in favor of this; an ex-president of Tidewater Marine was in favor of this ban. A lot of people in the oil business wanted a ban for 12 miles off of Mississippi. My question is, how would this affect that? There really is not a synopsis of the bill available yet, and I regret that, and I am sure it is an oversight, but representing the people of south Mississippi, I would like to know how does this affect that.

So if the State wished to have a ban for 12 miles from the shoreline or 12 miles out from the barrier islands, that would be within their jurisdiction under this bill?

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from Massachusetts, the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. Chairman, not everything our Nation does is wrong. And one of the things our Nation does that the private sector wouldn't do or chose not to do was insure people against flooding. And that is a very good program.

When you consider that the predictions are that within the next 50 years 80 percent of all Americans will live within 50 miles of a coast line, then protection from flood insurance, protection from hurricanes is very important.

In southern Mississippi I have had very, very few complaints about the Federal flood insurance program. I have had tens of thousands of complaints about how people were treated by the wind coverage. So I want to commend the gentleman from Massachusetts and the gentleman from Ohio for raising the amounts that people can buy coverage for.

Most of southern Mississippi had older homes. People had lived in them for decades. And now they, and I, are going through simultaneous sticker shock. Houses that you may have bought 20, 30 years ago for $50,000, you have now got to replace for a heck of a lot more than that. So by raising the amount that people can cover themselves from $250,000 to $335,000 is a huge improvement. Also, raising the contents up to $135,000 again is a huge improvement. I think as people put a pad to their contents after they woke up the next morning and discovered that they were gone, I think everyone was surprised that they owned more than they thought they did and they lost more than they thought they did. So again this is a move in the right direction.

I want to commend the committee for putting in the money for the new flood maps. Water in Bay St. Louis got to be 26 feet above sea level in some places. That was unprecedented since the Europeans landed over 300 years ago. And the Navy Oceanographic Lab tells us we are in for 10 years of this. So, again, since this is a public entity funded with taxpayer dollars, I think it is very important, whether it is Pensacola, Florida, or Gulf Shores, Alabama. Anywhere in coastal America I think it is important that we know the propensity to flood, take adequate steps to minimize losses in future hurricanes.

I would also like to commend the committee for working with me on trying to address the Katrina fraud. Citizens of this country are noticeably upset that some of the generous money given to them, either as taxpayers or through groups like the Red Cross, was abused, that people milked the system, in some instances, to do things like a sex- change operation.

I happen to think the biggest fraud of all, though, Mr. Chairman, came from the insurance industry. And I will walk you through this. Under the National Flood Insurance Plan, we count on the private sector not only to sell the insurance policy; we count on the private sector to adjudicate the claim.

Now, wind damage is paid for by a private company. Flood damage is paid for by the Nation through the National Flood Insurance Plan.

So imagine yourself, a 25-year-old insurance adjuster. You have visions of being a company man or getting that next promotion. You may even own stock in your company. You are sent out to adjudicate a claim on a house that is no longer there, knowing that if you said the wind did it, it is coming out of your company's pocketbook. If you say the water did it, it is coming out of the taxpayers' pocketbook.

The FBI says that fraud is a crime of opportunity. And I think under this system, we have given the insurance industry the opportunity to stick the bill to the taxpayers every time there was any question. And I think they did.

Is it a coincidence that the insurance industry reported $44 billion in profits last year, in the same year that the National Flood Insurance Program lost $25 billion? Are they that much better at what they do? I don't think so.

I think they took claims that legitimately should have been paid by the wind policies and stuck it to the taxpayer to the tune of millions, if not billions, of dollars. And I am going to

offer an amendment in a little while to ask for an Inspector General's report to see if that is true. And if it is true, then we need to come back and change the system so that we don't just count on an insurance adjuster blindly sending the bill to the government and the government paying it every time.

Think about it. If the Members in this room want to be reimbursed for their trip to the airport, they have got to turn in a taxi receipt for 15 or 20 bucks. But in the case of the National Flood Insurance Program, Allstate, State Farm, Nationwide, fill in the blank, can bill the government for hundreds of billions of dollars, and we pay that claim without even bothering to look into this. That is wrong. It is a system ripe for abuse. And I am convinced it has been abused.

Last, and several other speakers have touched on this, we need to rethink the whole flood insurance program. Whether you are from Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, any coastal State, we don't need people who have invested their life savings in their houses getting abused by their insurance company. And let me tell you, it is happening every day.

Senator Trent Lott, one of the most powerful men in the Senate, feels like the only way he is going to get justice out of his insurer is to sue them.

Federal Judge Lou Guirola had to drop hearing cases, like Senator Lott, so that he could sue his insurance company.

Now, when U.S. Senators and Federal judges feel like the only way they are going to get justice is to go to court themselves, what is it like for the grandmas and grandpas out there? What kind of fair shake are they going to get? And the answer is they are not getting one.

So if the private sector is not going to do it fairly, if they are not going to do it right, then maybe we need to expand the National Flood Insurance Program and call it the National Hurricane Insurance Program. Because let me tell you what I think is going to happen. We spend a lot of money to send the hurricane hunters out there for the Air Force, a lot of money to tell us where these storms are going to hit and when. We have satellites up in space to tell us about these storms. Why do we do that? So that people will get the heck out of there before a storm hits.

Based on what has happened, based on the tens of thousands of southern Mississippians who have been denied legitimate claims for their wind coverage, I am convinced in the next hurricane people are going to die needlessly because they stay behind in their home with a camcorder so they can prove to the insurance adjuster whether it is wind or water. That is wrong. It is completely contrary to why we fund the hurricane hunters; it is completely contrary to why we put those satellites in space. A person should not have to die on his property to get justice from his insurance company. And although there is no Federal regulation of the insurance industry, maybe the abuses that took place after Katrina will cause some of my colleagues to rethink this.

So, again, the bill takes some very important steps on allowing people to purchase more flood insurance, to purchase more contents insurance. It is taking the right step on getting the flood maps much more accurate, not so much for the guys who have lived there for 20 or 30 years, but for all the new folks who are moving to the coast who need to know if their property has a propensity to flood.

So I am grateful for what has been done. I have offered some observations of what needs to be done.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, when the National Flood Insurance Program was put together, a couple of steps were taken to minimize the administrative costs of that program. One, under the National Write Your Own Program, allowed the private sector, companies like Allstate, State Farm and Nationwide, to sell this policy, get a fee for selling this policy, but the cost of actually paying the claims would be borne by the Federal Government. There is really nothing wrong with that. The problem came in when at the same time they allowed the same companies to adjudicate the claim in the aftermath of the storm.

The example I used earlier is that you have got a young claims adjuster. He is a company man. He works for State Farm; he works for Allstate or Nationwide. He has visions of being promoted to a manager. He has stock in that company. He wants to go far.

He is sent out to what is now a slab that just a few days ago was someone's home. There is nothing there. And he has to determine whether that house was destroyed by wind or by water.

In the case of south Mississippi, the Navy Oceanographic Lab tells us we had 6 to 8 hours of maximum hurricane winds before the water ever got there. In the case of the little town of Bay St. Louis, that meant you had winds for 6 to 8 hours from 100 miles an hour up to 150 miles an hour before the tidal surge came in and destroyed the evidence of what the wind did.

So this claims adjuster, who wants to go far with the company, can decide whether his company is going to pay

that claim through the wind pool, or whether the taxpayers are going to pay through the flood insurance program.

The FBI says that fraud is a crime of opportunity. No matter how well-intended Congress was when they wrote this, they created the opportunity for a heck of a lot of fraud. In fact, I think the biggest fraud that occurred after Hurricane Katrina wasn't people getting an extra FEMA check or two or three extra checks from the Red Cross, although that is deplorable. The biggest fraud occurred at the corporate level where the insurance industry made a corporate decision to, whenever possible, blame flooding every time and stick the taxpayers with bills that they should have paid.

Mr. Chairman, last year the insurance industry reported a $44 billion profit after everything. Last year Federal flood insurance lost $25 billion. That is the reason this bill is on the floor today. I don't think it is a coincidence, because I think what happened was whenever given the opportunity, the insurance industry stuck the taxpayer with bills that they should have paid.

So what I am asking for is for the Inspector General to look into this and hopefully use the Fraudulent Claims Act, which requires treble damages for anyone who submits a false claim to our Nation, in addition to a $5,000 or $10,000 fine every time a false claim is submitted. Because I am convinced that is precisely what happened.

Mr. Chairman, after we are told that that is what happened, I hope this Congress will come back and find a way to where we as a Nation won't just blindly accept the claims of an insurance industry when we pay that bill.

I used the analogy before. If Mr. Oxley, if Mr. Pickering, any Member of this body wants to be reimbursed for their trip to the airport, they have got to submit a claims ticket from that taxi driver for the 15 bucks, or they don't get paid.

But in the instance of national flood insurance, these insurance companies submitted claims for $100,000, $200,000, $250,000, and the taxpayer paid it every time without anyone second guessing. That is the opportunity for fraud, and I believe that fraud took place.

So, Mr. Chairman, I don't know of anyone who in their right mind could oppose this, I don't know of anyone who wants to see our tax dollars used unwisely, and I don't know of anyone who wants to see the National Flood Insurance Program defrauded or the subject of fraud.

So, again, it is my understanding that Mr. Oxley will accept this amendment. I very much appreciate that. I hope that when the Inspector General report comes back 6 months from now that the next Congress will take steps to take away this opportunity for fraud.

I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Again, Mr. Chairman, I very much thank the gentleman from Ohio, and I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have the great fortune to represent the people of south Mississippi, and on behalf of the people of south Mississippi that suffered substantially in the loss of about 40,000 houses in late August of last year to Hurricane Katrina, I want to thank my fellow Americans for all the wonderful things they have done for us, for their financial help; for their college kids who came down and gave up their spring breaks to help out people; the church groups, the Rotarians, and individuals who came to provide medical care. There was a tremendous showing of generosity, of support to some people who needed it, and I hope I will never fail to thank the American people properly.

Mr. Speaker, I also want to, on behalf of the people of south Mississippi, express an outrage on the handful of southern Mississippians and southern Louisianans who abused that generosity. I do not think anyone wanted to see that happen, and certainly those who have broken the law should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I am sure the people who have read that their tax dollars were used to help somebody go to a gentleman's club or get someone get a sex change, they should be justifiably angry.

But let me tell you what the biggest Katrina fraud of all was. It was not done by a guy living in a FEMA trailer. It was not someone down on their luck. It was by corporate America and, in particular, the insurance industry in America, and next week this House will have an opportunity to do something about it.

Mr. Speaker, because of the unprecedented amount of losses because of Hurricane Katrina, our Nation will have to put $25 billion into the National Flood Insurance Program. I am going to vote for that. It is important. It is going to help a lot of people, but I would hope that my colleagues, when they do that, would amend that bill to require an investigation by the insurance industry in the post-Katrina world, and let me tell you what I know to have happened and what I think a Justice Department investigation will prove.

Mr. Speaker, when Congress wrote the National Flood Insurance Plan way back in the late 1960s, they called for the insurance industry to write the policy, even though it is a Federal flood insurance policy, but also to adjudicate the claim, to send their adjusters out to decide what happened to that dwelling and how much was it hurt and what would it cost to fix it.

The immediate conflict that was drawn in there was that person who may work for State Farm or Allstate or Nationwide, who may have stock in their company, who hopes to get promoted with that company, who may be looking for a Christmas bonus, is suddenly in a position when he walks to one of the 40,000 slabs in south Mississippi that are there in the days after the storm, he has got to decide whether the wind did it, and therefore, State Farm is going to pay, or the water did it, and the taxpayers are going to pay.

Let me tell you about an interesting coincidence in America. Last year, the private insurance industry had a profit of $44 billion. The National Flood Insurance Program lost $25 billion, the same year. How does this happen? Well, let me tell you what happened.

That insurance adjuster who works for State Farm or Allstate or Nationwide walked out, and in every instance blamed all the damage on the water, but that is completely contrary to what the Navy Oceanographic Command says. The Navy Oceanographic Command tells us in south Mississippi we had hurricane-force winds for 6 hours before the water ever showed up.

So what does this do? For the individual homeowner who had a flood insurance policy and a wind policy, they have been denied across the board. We have a U.S. Federal judge who cannot hear these cases of people who feel like they have been wronged because he, too, is suing his insurance company. In the other body, Senator Lott, who has been extremely supportive of the insurance industry during his entire congressional and senatorial career, is filing suit against his insurance company.

So if the insurance company is willing to take on U.S. Senators, if they are willing to take on Federal judges, what do you think the moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas of south Mississippi, what kind of chance do they have?

So it is wrong on an individual case, but let me tell you why it is wrong for all of you.

Remember, every time they said the water did it and not wind, the taxpayer paid the claim, and so now we have to raise $25 billion, probably of borrowed money, to pay claims that should have been paid by companies that had a profit of $44 billion. There is no Federal regulation of the insurance industry, but there is a law called the Fair Claims Act.

The biggest abuse, the biggest fraud that has occurred since Hurricane Katrina has been by the American insurance industry. Next week this House will have an opportunity to look into what I have just told you, the allegations that billions of dollars that should have been paid by the private insurance industry were instead paid by the American taxpayer.

How is it that during the same storm season the private industry makes $44 billion while the taxpayers lose $25 billion? Under the Federal False Claims Act, if indeed these companies did that, then they will be fined millions of dollars, and their corporate executives

will go to jail, a fate they richly deserve.

So, Mr. Speaker, I am asking for two things: Next week, when the National Flood Insurance Renewal Program comes before the House, I am asking for an inspector general investigation of the insurance industry to see whether or not claims that should have been paid by the private sector insurance industry were wrongly stuck on the American taxpayer. And I am asking for your support.

Mr. Speaker, I will note that two of those insurance industries that I think were the biggest culprits reside in Illinois. But I also note that two-thirds of all the campaign contributions from the insurance industry went to your political party. So the real question is, Mr. Speaker, are we going to look out for the American people, or are we going to look out for your contributors?

That decision will be made next Tuesday.

Mr. Speaker, as the Representative of the people of south Mississippi, I want to rise once again to thank my fellow citizens, both collectively and individually, for what they have done for the

people of south Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. We have been the beneficiaries of tremendous generosity, and I don't want at any time for people to think that what they have done as individuals, through groups, through churches, through charities, and as taxpayers that we are in any way ungrateful for that.

Mr. Speaker, one of the continuing problems that persists in south Mississippi is the whole debate over insurance. When people lost their homes, when on the day after the storm there was nothing there and they tried to settle with their insurance company, in almost every instance the insurance companies refused to pay on homeowners' policies, citing those homes had been destroyed by water and not wind. And, of course, when your house isn't there, you don't have much of an arguing position.

That has affected the lives of tens of thousands of south Mississippians, and they suffer individually as a result of that. But, Mr. Speaker, what I am asking my colleagues to look into, and I will offer an amendment to the National Flood Insurance Program when it comes before this body next week or the following week, is to ask for the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security to look into whether or not a crime has been committed against the citizens of this country collectively.

Because when the Allstates, the Nationwides, the Farm Bureaus, the State Farms of the world refused to pay the claim on a homeowner's policy and shifted that cost to the National Flood Insurance Program, I suspect that they took costs that they should have paid out of their pockets and their stockholders' pockets and shifted those costs unfairly and, in my opinion, criminally to the taxpayer.

When an adjustment agent walked to any of the 10,000 slabs and said there is nothing there, your house was washed away, and there was no wind damage, that was completely contrary to what the Navy Meteorological Command tells us, that in communities like Bay St. Louis and Waveland there was 6 to 8 hours of 120-to-180-mile-an-hour winds before the water ever arrived. Even farther away from the eye, in towns like Biloxi and Ocean Springs, there were at least, according to the United States Navy, at least 3 hours of maximum wind before the high water arrived.

So when these agents looked the people in south Mississippi in the eye and denied their claims, they not only hurt them but they are hurting us all. Because, again, when that cost is shifted to the National Flood Insurance Program, billions of taxpayer dollars had to be shifted from other accounts and, more honestly, borrowed to help make up the difference. So it is not fair to them, and it is not fair to the American taxpayer.

I think, at the very least, this Congress ought to ask the Inspector General's office to look into it. I am going to offer that amendment, and at this time I am asking for my colleagues' help on that. We will be going before the Rules Committee next week. I do want to thank Chairman Oxley for his generosity in hearing me out on this. He has offered a Government Accountability Office investigation. But in total honesty, that is already going on.

I think that when you believe a crime has been committed, then I think it calls for a criminal investigation. And everything I see in south Mississippi tells me a crime has been perpetrated on the people of south Mississippi and the taxpayers of this Nation, and I am asking my colleagues to look into what I think is a crime.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I have a modification to my amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, the modification, that the majority was so kind to agree to, would name this year's defense bill after one of the finest gentlemen to ever serve in this body, a former soldier, a statesman from the State of Mississippi, Sonny Montgomery, and the author of the Montgomery GI bill.

The bill does a lot of things this year that I think Sonny would be very proud of, particularly extending the TRICARE privileges to guardsmen and reservists, and since we are told that former Congressman Montgomery is under the weather, we hope that he is aware of what we are doing today because, again, I cannot think of anyone in our Nation who has done more to advance the Guard and Reserve than Sonny Montgomery.

He caught a heck of a lot of heat from people when he used his friendship with then-President Bush to have the Guard and Reserve called up for the first Gulf War. The decision he made then, the decision President Bush made then, was absolutely the right decision, and it has led to the one-force policy that our Nation enjoys today.

So, again, I want to thank the majority for working with me on that.

I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank my colleagues for their kind words about Sonny Montgomery. I would also like to remind my colleagues that the underlying amendment calls for telling the Department of Defense that by the end of fiscal year 2007, the Secretary of Defense will develop a plan to equip every wheeled vehicle that leaves a compound in Iraq or Afghanistan with an IED jammer.

Mr. Chairman, I voted for the use of force in Iraq and therefore I share in the responsibility for the death of every young person and every not-so-young person who has been maimed over there. It is a very unfortunate tactic by our enemies to use improvised explosive devices that are remote detonated, which have resulted in over half of the casualties and injuries of Americans over there.

Technology exists to jam the signal that triggers that charge. Many of our vehicles in Iraq have these jammers, but not all. Just as we would never dream of sending a helicopter out that does not have protection from missiles, or dream of sending a C-130 to land at Baghdad or Balad that did not have an antimissile defense, we as a nation should not dream of sending one Humvee or one truck outside of a compound that does not have the technology to jam that signal and protect the troops on board.

I have been to most of the funerals of the south Mississippians who have died in this war, and I have visited most of the soldiers at Walter Reed who have been injured. In every instance they were either killed or injured by an IED, and I regret to say, in every instance the vehicle they were traveling in did not have a jammer.

We are the world's greatest nation. We are going to spend $10 billion this year on national missile defense and we have not been attacked by a missile, and yet every day we are having young Americans killed by IEDs. I think it is time we tell the Department of Defense that we as a Congress want to see that every single vehicle in Iraq is protected, every single soldier, airman, Marine, every single Navy personnel who is traveling in these vehicles is being protected.

I welcome the comments of the chairman of the committee, and I very much welcome his support of this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this bill. I want to commend all of my colleagues. In particular, I want to commend a former colleague, Congressman Sonny Montgomery, who is under the weather, who is probably watching, and we want him to know that all of us are thinking of him, and in this bill, in particular, I think Congressman Montgomery after his years of avidly serving the National Guard would be very pleased to know that a provision in this bill will extend to our Guardsmen and Reservists the exact same TRICARE benefits that are extended to the regular force. It is long overdue and I want to thank the chairman of the subcommittee, Chairman McHugh, and all the other people who helped make this happen.

I also want to mention on the TRICARE for retirees that there will be no increase in their copays. That is an issue of great importance to the people who have already served us. Great people and great nations keep their word, and we need to keep our word to them to keep their premiums low.

I would also like to commend my colleague Joel Hefley. We are going to miss him very much. He has been a very honorable Member of this body. I think the committee did the right thing in naming the housing complex off of Fort Carson after him. He is going to be missed greatly.

Mr. Chairman, a couple of things in the limited time I have left that I would ask you to consider for the remaining time on this bill. First is the amendment by the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis) that would elevate the Chief of the National Guard Bureau to Joint Chiefs of Staff. There are over 400,000 National Guardsmen, and the events of the hurricane in south Mississippi last fall really convinced me that should there be an attack on the American homeland it is going to look a lot like Hurricane Katrina.

You are going to have a lack of electricity, food and water, no place even to put the bodies of the dead, and the National Guard did a magnificent job in responding to that. They will in all probability do a magnificent job should there be a terrorist event in this country.

But the person who should be at the table with the President in the event of that is the Chief of the National Guard. I would ask that the Members of this body be given an opportunity to vote on the Davis amendment.

Second is an amendment of my own that would provide that 100 percent of the wheeled vehicles in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters that leave a base have an IED jammer. I voted to send those young men and women over there. We are now in the third year of this conflict. Well over half of all of the casualties, well over half of all deaths are caused by IEDs. Just as the Department early on did not think it was necessary for every soldier to have body armor, or every vehicle to be up- armored, I think the Department has been slow in seeing to it that every vehicle has an IED jammer. I would ask for a vote on that amendment. I think it is important.

I do not think any of us want to go to a funeral and tell the moms and dads that we are visiting that their son, their daughter, husband, brother happened to be in the last vehicle in Iraq that we failed to put a jammer on.

We are going to spend $10 billion this year on missile defense. We have not been attacked by a missile. Thousands

of young Americans have died in Iraq. Half of those young Americans died as a result of IEDs. It is, unfortunately, the weapon of choice and, unfortunately, a very efficient weapon that our enemy is using. We need to take that weapon away from them, and the IED jammers can contribute to that. I ask for an opportunity for a vote on that amendment. It is in the best interest of our troops.

Again, this is a good bill and I encourage my colleagues to vote for it.

Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Madam Chairman, may I ask the Clerk to read the amendment? It is a very short amendment.

Madam Chairman, the President of the United States came to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi about a month ago. He stood on the floor of the gymnasium at Saint Stanislas High School and made a solemn pledge to the people of Mississippi that he would repair every Federal installation to pre-Katrina standards. In this supplemental request that he sent to Congress, the President seeks to fulfill a part of that pledge by rebuilding the commissaries at Keesler Air Force Base, and at the Navy Construction Battalion in Gulfport, Mississippi. The funds he requested would get them back to their pre- Katrina standards.

It is my understanding that in committee, there were some concerns expressed that because these are normally MWR funds, that there was not a precedent for appropriated funds being used to repair MWR facilities. I have provided to both the majority and the minority a lengthy list of precedents where appropriated funds have been used on military installations to repair MWR facilities.

I also understand that there were concerns about the authorization for this. Again, on the publications that I have given to both the majority and the minority, we point out Title 10 USC, 2854, it authorizes appropriated funds to ``repair, restore or replace'' facilities damaged or destroyed by acts of God, natural disasters, fire or terrorism, even MWR facilities normally constructed with non appropriated funds which was incorporated in DOD policy, DOD 1015.10.

Madam Chairman, since, again, this is the President's request, it is for facilities that were clearly destroyed by an act of God at the end of August of 2005, that we have fulfilled the requirements of the committee to show that again, there was precedent for this, it is authorized, it is the President's request and, quite frankly, the people who shop at that commissary, up to 20,000 young airmen, tens of thousands of military retirees who paid their dues in Korea, in Vietnam. Some of our World War II veterans still shop there, Gulf War veterans shop there, and it is only trying to do for them what was promised to them. They have made due with a very, very small commissary that the base has funded with one of these small appropriations since the storm. We are trying to put the base back like it was. The base was spared in the BRAC rounds. It is actually going to grow a bit as a result of BRAC. And so for any number of good reasons, we are put trying to put this back, the appropriations sought by the President back in this bill.

Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, again, I appreciate, number one, both the majority and the minority giving me the opportunity to bring this amendment up tonight. To the point that the chairman raised, I have served on the authorizing committee for about 16 years now. In the span of that 16 years, I don't ever recall a request from our colleagues on appropriation to pass language to either force or encourage the commissaries to be self-insured. And I think I am pretty keen on this issue and I am pretty confident in saying we have never received a request from your committee to do that. So now that the President is willing to make this commissary whole, that obviously the need is there, that it was indeed an act of God, that it is authorized, I find it strange that at this time Keesler Air Force base and AAFES would be punished for not fulfilling a request that they never got.

On the other hand, I think we could fulfill requirements of the President's request, fulfill what is best for AAFES, fulfill what is best for the airmen, for the retirees and the active duty personnel. The people who flew the missions into the hurricane shop at this commissary. People who fly missions in Iraq shop at this commissary. It is a part of their compensation that was promised. It is a part of the compensation that has been denied.

Anyone who has visited Mississippi gulf coast knows that the shopping opportunities in the private sector have been greatly diminished as a result of the storm. So you can't say just go out in town, because in the case of Waveland, Mississippi, in the case of Bay St. Louis Mississippi, Long Beach, Mississippi, Pass Christian, Mississippi, those stores are no longer there. So for all of those reasons, I would encourage my colleagues to put back the money that the President has asked for.

Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, let me first start by thanking my good friend Roscoe Bartlett for his tremendous help this year. The bill authorizes five ships, more than the administration asked for, unfortunately not as many as I would like to build, but very, very great help of the gentleman from Maryland on the part of adding an LHA(R) for the Marine Corps to the ship; getting the next generation destroyer, the DDX, started; and adding a Virginia Class submarine to the fleet.

Again at five ships, if you figure the typical 30-year life of a ship, we are cruising toward a 150-ship Navy. That is entirely too small, despite Navy projections that they think they can get the fleet up to about 313 by 2013. But again these are important steps in the right direction.

I want to commend the gentleman from Maryland for his help in making that happen. There are a lot of people who have a lot of things they want to say.

I want to yield what remains of my time to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Marshall).

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

Last night, about 12,000 Mississippians went to bed in somebody else's house or in their carport or in their car or in their tent. They are waiting on a FEMA trailer. I did not promise them a FEMA trailer. The President of the United States did. He has not fulfilled that promise yet. It is over 102 days past the storm.

As we speak, there are tens of thousands of Mississippians, average Joes, who are about to lose their house. See, they lived outside the flood plain. They had wind insurance, and a storm of magnitude that has not occurred in 300 years either destroyed or flooded their homes.

Now they have no home. They have a mortgage to pay, and their insurance company, which contributes heavily to the folks over there, says you are not getting a dime because that was water and not wind, but they will use any excuse they can.

I have introduced legislation to try to help those folks, and it is expensive. It is going to cost about $5 billion to help those folks hang on to their homes and hang on to their mortgage; and in 102 days we have not had a hearing or a vote on it. But if you are a member of the political contributor class, the guys who write the big checks to the RNC, guys who write a big check to a Congressman here, Senator there, we have got a vote on your tax cut that does not even expire for 3 years.

You want to know what this House's priorities are? It is not with the average Joes. It is with the political contributor class. You call them what you want. You can call them rich, but we all know it comes down to who writes the checks.

By the way, the guy on Coleman Avenue whose house washed away, he does not write big checks. So maybe that is why you do not listen to him. It has been 102 days, and you have done nothing. There is no talk of doing anything.

There are 12,000 Mississippians waiting on a FEMA trailer. So what do you bring to the floor? Is it hurricane relief? Is it something to help the average Joes? It is a tax break for the wealthiest 1 percent of America who, by the way, write the big checks to the political parties. Tell me your priorities are not screwed up, because I am going to tell you they are.

Mr. Speaker, I want to remind the gentleman that when your house is washed away, your job is washed away. You are not looking for a tax break. You are looking for your fellow Americans to

help you out while your kids are serving in the Mississippi National Guard over in Iraq.

You have not done that for 102 days.

Mr. Speaker, today marks the 100th day since Hurricane Katrina came ashore in south Mississippi. Since that time, we have had a mixture of incredible support from the people of this Nation; but also, quite frankly, there have been a lot of promises made by the President of the United States that have yet to be fulfilled.

In 100 days since the storm, numerous regrets by me, Senator Lott, Mr. Pickering and others to try to help those people who found themselves in the horrible situation of having a home that never flooded, or a piece of land that had never flooded since the Europeans settled in Mississippi in 1699, who thought they were properly covered by having wind insurance, who thought they had taken adequate precautions to secure their home in the event of a storm, who found that their homes had flooded.

And now for 100 days, I, Senator Lott, Mr. Pickering and others have asked to try to do something to help those people. After all, every aid package the President talks about talks about tax breaks for the fat cats. Well, the fat cats are going to do just fine after the storm. They always do. They have got the money; they know how to invest it; they know how to make more money. They do not need tax breaks. The people who need help in south Mississippi are the average-Joe homeowners: the kid who coaches the Little League team, the guy or lady who sings in the choir, who find themselves now at the end of 90 days that their mortgage is due, they have lost their job, their house has been either destroyed or horribly damaged and they are looking for help from their Nation.

This is an extremely patriotic part of the country, and an extremely high percentage of those people have served in the Armed Forces or are presently serving, and all they are asking from you, Mr. President, is a little bit of consideration.

After 100 days, we had taken care of the people of New York after 9/ 11. After 100 days, we had taken care of the people of San Francisco. Tonight in south Mississippi, people will crawl into two and three-man tents because 12,000 families are still waiting for a FEMA trailer.

The company you gave the contract to, Bechtel Incorporated, has donated tens of thousands of dollars to your campaign and to the Republican majority. You are obviously friends. I think you can pick up the phone to the Bechtel family and ask them to finish the job.

After 100 days, only two-thirds of the people who have asked for a trailer since their home has been destroyed have received one. I did not promise those folks a trailer. You did, Mr. President. After 100 days, it has turned cold. A shower with a garden hose in August feels pretty good; a shower with a garden hose when it is 33 degrees outside is a pretty crummy experience.

The contracts for debris removal were let on a per-cubic-yard basis. Therefore, the people who did that had an incentive to work quickly because the more they did the more they got paid. The contracts to deliver FEMA trailers was paid by the month. If you pay anyone to do something by the hour as opposed to the job, it is human nature they are going to do it slower. The people of south Mississippi have waited long.

Mr. Speaker, it is time to call your friends at Bechtel and tell them to finish the job. Folks had to live in a pup tent for Thanksgiving and their patience has worn thin.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, I remember when the promise was made that you could cut taxes, increase spending, and pay down the debt. I thought that was a bunch of malarkey at the time, and it has turned out to be $2.4 trillion wrong.

But to come to south Mississippi and to promise the people in south Mississippi that you are going to get them a trailer, and not fulfill that promise or drag your feet on that promise, that is something people see every day. It is something I see every time I go home, and that is every weekend.

Mr. President, it is time for you and the people at Bechtel to do the job: to deliver the trailers that are sitting in places like Hope, Arkansas, where there are thousands of trailers sitting on the runway. Or Purvis, Mississippi, where there are over 1,200 trailers sitting on the ground, or the staging area in De Lisle or the staging area in Hancock County. They are not doing anyone any good sitting in the staging areas.

If you have to void the contract with Bechtel, by all means do so. If the Bechtel family has any respect for their good family name, I am asking them as a Member of Congress representing south Mississippi to replace the management you have in south Mississippi and get the job done because the people of south Mississippi and the people of this Nation who are paying for this deserve better.

Mr. Speaker, as I speak, one of the greatest legal scams in American history is being perpetrated on the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, honest Americans who purchased insurance policies to protect their families in time of a hurricane. They paid their premiums for decades. They are being told one by one ``we are not going to pay your claim.''

See, in a typical insurance policy known as a ``wind policy,'' you would think it would protect you from the 140- to 160-knot breezes of Hurricane Katrina; but somehow buried in that policy is small language that says they are not going to pay for wind-driven water.

Now, for most of us, you would think of wind-driven water as maybe the water driven under the stoop of your door in a rain storm, or if you have an older house like I had, under the windows, maybe get some curtains wet or the sheet rock under that window.

So if the wind blew a tree into your house, you could file a claim. If the wind blew a car into your house, you could file a claim. But if the wind generates a 30-foot wall of water, well, then the American insurance industry en mass is telling those people in Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and the Alabama gulf coast, You're out of luck. We took your money. You're a chump.

Our Nation has a flood insurance policy separate from that where the credibility of this Nation is at stake. I have already told you what I have thought the private sector is doing to my people. But this is us. We also collected people's money in good faith that when there was a flood of their homes that would be paid. We had an unprecedented natural disaster.

Now, two things can happen. We can go the way of the private sector which is doing everything they can to scam my constituents, and please use that word, or we can honor our claims. Because a person or a nation is only as good as its word. Our Nation gave our word that we would pay these claims if substantiated. Those claims have been substantiated. Let us set a precedent that hopefully the insurance industry will follow and pay our claims.

I want to commend Chairman Oxley. I want to commend Ranking Member Frank for bringing this to the floor in a timely manner. I very much want to commend the other body for plussing this up so that we can fulfill our obligation as a Nation for those people who had flood insurance policies, that we will pay those claims in a timely manner.

At the same time I want to go on record as saying that I think there ought to be a national registry of child molesters and, at the moment, insurance industry executives because I think Americans ought to know if they live near one.

Mr. Speaker, in south Mississippi tonight,

the people who have electricity, who might be at a VFW hall or a parish church hall, who are living in two- and three-man igloo tents waiting for Congress to do something, have absolutely got to think this place has lost their minds. The same Congress that voted to give the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans tax breaks every time. Every time. Without a tax break. Out of the goodness of their hearts, no? To help their big contributors.

Who is kidding who? The same America that are spending 4 to $6 billion a month in Iraq where, by the way, 4,000 Mississippians are fighting tonight, 15 have already come home dead, a dozen more have been to Walter Reed, who never asked the Iraqis for an offset are suddenly saying in the name of the poor folks in Mississippi who lost their houses, poor folks in New Orleans whose houses were flooded, we can't do this unless we have to hurt some other Americans to help some Americans? Suddenly after taking care of those who had the most, we have got to hurt the least. To help the folks in Mississippi?

Folks, this is insane. I have sat here. I remember the vote. May 9, 2001. I remember a President who said he could cut taxes, increase spending and pay down the debt. We are $2.4 trillion deeper in debt than that night. I did not vote for that. Almost all of you did. I did not vote to tell the folks who make hundreds of millions of dollars a year, you deserve a tax break. You did. I voted for offsets for the war in Iraq because, yes, we went to war. My goodness, kids from Mississippi are dying there. I have got a kid who lost both legs volunteering in my office to answer the phone to help folks who were hurt in Katrina. Mississippi has paid their dues. Why should they have to pay their dues twice?

This is an emergency. The one time you borrow money is when you go to war and for an emergency. And so, now you have to have an offset? Don't tell me you are being fiscally responsible. I sat here for 5 years and watched you take a budget surplus and run it into $2.5 trillion of new debt. So let's put these things in perspective. Yes, I was told the Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction and they are getting ready to use them.

Yes, I was told that you could cut taxes, increase spending and balance the budget. But this is the cruelest lie of all, that the only way you can help the people who have lost everything is by hurting somebody else.

Mr. Chairman, I have come to the same conclusion as the great gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson). I have just probably been at it longer. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the responsibility to provide for the national defense. It does not make us generals; it does not make us admirals. We do not tell admirals how to sink ships; we do not tell generals how to takes hills. We do, hopefully, provide sound business decisions for them.

The whole concept of BRAC is taking that decision-making process away from the people who begged for the job and were given the job by the citizens and delegating it to some other people. I did not run for Congress to delegate my responsibilities. I take them very seriously.

The service Secretaries would come before our committee, for years they have come before our committee and said, We have too many bases. Every single service Secretary. The gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie) and I would respond to the service Secretaries, Name one base that you want to close. Just one. The same service Secretaries who said they wanted to cancel the Crusader, who said they wanted to cancel the Arsenal ship, who wanted to cancel the Joint Strike Fighter, the same guys who have no hesitation on canceling things and making tough decisions, never named one base that they wanted to close.

We followed that up with a very simple question: In the three previous rounds of BRAC, can you name one weapons system that you have bought with those savings? Can you name one additional benefit that you have given to the troops? Can you name one good thing that came out of this? Never once could they answer that question.

You see, BRAC saves no money. What people miss in all of this is that when a base is closed, the local communities then come to Congress, as they should, and say, Look, you have just put all my folks out of work. We at least want the property back. And in every instance Congress has given that property back to the locals, so there is no savings of selling off the property.

As a matter of fact, it gets worse, because our Nation has to live by the same laws as everyone else. If an individual pollutes a piece of property, they have to clean it up before they can sell it. To date, our Nation has spent $15 billion cleaning up properties before we gave them away.

The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson) makes an excellent point: every time you lose a base, you lose a capability. The worst of Hurricane Katrina hit my congressional district. I was very fortunate to be friends with Admiral Mullen, the Chief of Naval Operations. I was very fortunate to be friends with General Steven Bloom, the head of the National Guard Bureau. In my frantic calls to them in the aftermath of the storm begging for their help, their first response was, Where can I put my people? Name a barracks, name an airfield, name a place where I can put my people so they can help the people of Mississippi.

Every time you lose a base, you lose a place to put those people in the event weather, whether it is a tsunami in the Pacific, a hurricane in Mississippi, a flood or earthquake on the west coast, a flood in the Midwest, you lose a capability to help the American people.

We are at war. Goodness gracious, we have 140,000 Americans fighting and dying in Iraq. We have another 20,000-plus in Afghanistan. Did anyone see these wars coming? The truth of the matter is, in my time in Congress we have had a war in Panama that no one saw coming, we have had two wars in Iraq that we really did not see coming, we had a war in Bosnia that no one saw coming. So when you close a base, you close it forever and you lose that capability to respond to future contingencies.

Above all, when some new weapons system comes along, you lose a place to deploy it. Right now our Nation is buying 30,000 acres in North Carolina, and some people in North Carolina think it is a great idea and some people think it is a terrible idea. We are spending a heck of a lot of your money buying land in North Carolina so we can build a base to land F-18s, the newest version of the F-18, when they come off the carriers.

Then we have to buy the land and build a runway. And everyone who has served knows it does not end with the runway. You have to have a fire station, barracks for the enlisted, barracks for the single guys, family housing for the married folks, you have to have commissaries, you have to have fun things for the guys to do when they are off duty, because we are trying to attract young people like you to come serve our country. All of these things cost money, and we are going to build all these things in North Carolina at great expense to the public.

With you we already had all those things. We had all those things that we are getting ready to buy and build in North Carolina in Jacksonville, Florida. It was called Cecil Field. It had a 10,000-foot runway and three 8,000-foot runways. It had an excellent quality of life, and it was all paid for by the American taxpayer, and a previous round of BRAC closed that.

So, please, proponents of this, tell me how we are saving the taxpayers money, how we are making the Nation more secure, and, above all, if the service Secretaries cannot name a single base that they think is worthy of closing, why are we going to close so many bases in one fell swoop?

We were elected to follow the Constitution. The Constitution clearly gives Congress the responsibility to provide for the Army and the Navy. Let us do our job and let us not hide behind some commission to do our work for us. I urge Members to vote against the recommendations of this commission.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I would like to remind the gentleman that this Congress closed the naval station at Roosevelt Roads without a BRAC.

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the members of the Committee on Ways and Means for bringing this to the floor. As you know, south Mississippi, south Louisiana suffered a catastrophe of biblical proportions; and there is really no other way to describe it. A 30-foot wall of water hit south Mississippi, resulting in the breaking of the floodgates in New Orleans.

Whole communities, the city of Waveland, it is pretty fair to say no longer exists. The city of Bay Saint Louis, probably 80 percent of the people in that town lost their homes. In portions of Harrison County, in Pass Christian and Biloxi, there are entire blocks leveled, with one person not able to distinguish the parts of furniture from his house with the parts of furniture from another.

I consider myself a deficit hawk. I have voted against almost every tax bill that came to this floor because I did not want to see the deficit go up by the $2 trillion it has. This is different. I felt that those bills took care of the wealthiest Americans. I think this bill takes care of the neediest Americans. It is truly a step in the right direction when we have so much to do.

One of the fights that the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. McCrery) and all of us from the affected area will have is to help those people who could never have conceived they would flood with their insurance needs. They had wind insurance. They are now being told it did not cover a flood, and places that had never flooded in recorded history of the Europeans coming to America flooded. They are being left out in the cold. We have to find a way to help them.

There is going to be, based on the Florida experience, a number, probably in the tens of thousands of people, who will be told by FEMA that their house has been 51 percent destroyed and, by regulation, it has to be bulldozed. And then it is complicated by, I am told, based on the Florida experience, the insurance companies who will go to them and say FEMA says there is only 51 percent destruction, so we are only going to give you 51 percent of what you thought your premium was. So if you had a $100,000 house, it is bulldozed; but you only get $51,000 in payment. We have to fix that. We cannot let that happen again. There are too many hard-working people who are looking to Congress for leadership.

I do not say this often, because I did vote for the war in Iraq and I share in the responsibility for every one of those Americans who were wounded there and everyone who died there, but on a daily basis we hire Iraqis to clean the streets, just to give them something to do and give them a chance at life. On a daily basis we are fixing sewer lines in Iraq. On a daily basis we are building schools in Iraq. We need to do for our fellow Americans what we so willingly do for the Iraqi people.

So I thank the committee for this great step in the right direction. It is such a, quite frankly, small step on such a monumental journey that we have to take; but it is at least a step in the right direction, and thank you for doing it.

Madam Speaker, I recently heard the gentleman who represents Hollywood speaking about how it is somehow fair that the only Member of this body that I know of who was there on Ground Zero, who rode with the National Guard to distribute food because FEMA so thoroughly screwed up, who realizes that if it were not for the United States military doing FEMA's job for them, people would have starved to death, people would have died of dehydration, hospitals would not have gotten needed medical supplies, that I will not be allowed to subpoena witnesses.

So as a Member of this body who was elected by as good a margin as anyone else here, I do object that I could not ask for a witness, that I could not subpoena a witness to deliver the message that needs to be delivered about the lessons learned in Mississippi. We do not need to make the same mistakes when the next hurricane hits.

The bottom line is FEMA did make horrible mistakes that came very close to costing people their lives. FEMA could have avoided millions of dollars in unnecessary aerial replenishment of people that we could get trucks to, because they insisted on one point of delivery in a county where very few people still had cars that were running and those that had cars that ran could not get gasoline.

FEMA could have sent thousands of people on their way to their families in other parts of the State, but did not bring gasoline in for them. There are a number of mistakes that we never need to make again as a Nation. And I would hope that I would have the opportunity to subpoena some of the people that need to speak on this. It does not need to be Bush-bashing; it does not need to be anybody-bashing. It needs to be an honest account of what happened.

But how can we do that when one of the people that was at Ground Zero cannot ask questions of witnesses, cannot subpoena witnesses? Is that really fair? Does that really get to the solution of the problem? I do not think so. I think our Nation works best when we work together, and a 9/11-type commission composed of whoever needs to be subpoenaed is what we need to do.

At the end of the day, I am going to vote for a commission no matter how bad, because something is better than nothing; but the American people deserve for us to do it right.

Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Madam Speaker, given the gentleman's desire to see that we get to the bottom of this, given that the gentleman is elected by a majority of the people from California, and given that I am elected by a majority of people in the most affected area, does the gentleman not think it would be fair that I would have the same right, as someone from the affected area, to subpoena witnesses as the gentleman from the west coast of this country would have?