Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the families of East Texas, especially those with loved ones serving overseas, I strongly support this resolution.

Despite what the national media portray, the inconvenient truth is this: Terrorists have been attacking America freely for more than two decades. We should have learned we cannot push America's security forward by retreating from terrorism. We cannot strengthen the world by weakening our resolve, and we cannot support our troops by belittling them at every turn.

It is clear to all but perhaps us that the terrorists' strategy is not to defeat America in Iraq. They cannot do that. Their strategy is to defeat America in America. They are counting on the American public to lose its will and for Washington politicians to undermine the morale and support of our troops overseas.

The truth is if America quits, if America turns back now, no nation, no community will be safe from terrorism again. Terrorists will learn that they can wait us out one public opinion poll at a time. And the next time America is attacked, the next time innocent people die and we vow justice, who will believe us then? Who will support us then?

I stand with the President. We must persist in Iraq and Afghanistan until these nations are no longer safe havens for terrorism. We have ``taken the hill'' against the terrorists. Too many Americans have sacrificed their lives for us to give it back now. Americans like Chief Warrant Officer Chuck Fortenberry of Woodville, Lance Corporal Shane Goodman of Orange, Staff Sergeant Christopher Everett of Huntsville, Specialist Michael Weger of Spring, and Specialist Hoby Bradfield of The Woodlands, among many.

Our troops have proven they will not quit. The question is will we? Our troops know what is at stake. The question is do we?

Let us not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Let us put aside our partisan politics and unite until terrorism is truly and soundly defeated.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly support this measure, not only because it provides important support for our troops overseas, but dramatically accelerates the security of our border here in America.

As importantly, because of the leadership of Chairman Lewis, because of the leadership here in the House, this bill also includes critical help for people and families and communities in east and southeast Texas devastated by Hurricane Rita. This measure provides much needed help to fund the Katrina students who are in our schools, provides much needed help to reimburse our local governments at the same rate as Louisiana, which will save our taxpayers and our smaller counties tens of millions of very important dollars.

Finally, it provides help to rebuild the homes and roofs and communities in south and east Texas devastated by Rita. Most people don't know, we had almost 75,000 homes damaged or destroyed. Many of them have temporary roofs today. Ten percent of our evacuees have not yet returned due to Hurricane Rita.

Thanks to the leadership of Chairman Lewis, and subcommittee chairs, Mr. Knollenberg, Mr. Rogers and Mr. Young, of the support of people like my colleagues in east Texas, Congressmen Poe and Gohmert, freshman legislators who have done a tremendous job representing their district, the House leadership and our Texas appropriators, thanks to all of them, our families and communities in east Texas are going to get the help that they sorely need, truly deserve, and we are all very grateful. Again, on behalf of the families and residents of east Texas, I want to thank our appropriations leaders for their help. This is good news this day for east Texas and southeast Texas.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor June Kenyon upon her retirement from my district office staff.

Beginning in 1997 when I first took office, June Kenyon brought to the field office in Humble, Texas her wealth of knowledge and experience gleaned from working for my predecessor, the Honorable Jack Fields. Not only did June sign on as Office Manager but took on the role of Head of Casework to help constituents. I was blessed to have June's expertise and long record of commitment to constituents in helping me confront the challenges of being a newly elected Congressman.

For the next 9 years, June excelled at her roles and increased her knowledge of the inner workings of Federal agencies to the point that some even invited her to brief their staffs on the intricacies of casework with Congressional offices.

June's command of the system and successful resolution of thousands of cases are a tribute to her professionalism and relentlessness in serving the residents of the 8th Congressional District.

Extremely hard-working, painstakingly fair, exceedingly knowledgeable--these are qualities June has not only honed but put at the disposal of constituents as she advocates for them and resolves difficult issues. But it was in the challenges faced by our constituents in the aftermath of Hurricane Rita this past fall that June's abilities shown brightly as she led the efforts to resolve quickly and systematically over 1,000 claims for expedited assistance from FEMA. Working long hours, interfacing with local officials and aid agencies, June contributed significantly to the ability of Southeast Texans to survive the aftermath of this devastating storm and begin the recovery process.

While June has always been a diligent staffer, the last 18 months have created personal challenges for her, including a long commute to Conroe after redistricting led to closing the Humble office. The redistricting also meant serving a different and larger geographic area. June did not miss a beat in adapting to the new conditions, including participating in the Mobile Office taking caseworkers to constituents in the small towns of East Texas.

In the years I have worked with June, I have come to know a committed Republican activist and a woman of broad and varied interests which I hope she will pursue in the time afforded by retirement. From her native New York, June brought with her to the Houston area, a distinctive Long Island accent and a deep-seated love of music. Although she has yet to sing for our staff, June has shared with us reminiscences as varied as singing classical music at Carnegie Hall and the blues at

unnamed, smoke-filled venues. A lover of opera, she has long been a subscriber to the Houston Grand Opera and Opera in the Heights.

Mr. Speaker, I know you join with me in saying ``thank you'' and ``job well done'' to June Kenyon for her years of loyal service to Congressman Jack Fields and myself, but most of all to the people of Southeast Texas whom she has served with distinction.

Mr. Speaker, this act ought to probably be entitled the Get Foster Children Out of the System Into a Safe Home As Soon As Possible Act, as it has real consequences for our foster children.

There have been so often foster children, even in the best system, that are lost in that system. These delays can be as, Tom DeLay has told you, just so harmful for them. Moving them forward is the right thing to do, and it is a possible thing to do.

Each week on TV, we watch on ``Home Makeover'' a set of people come together and build a complete home for a family in one week. Why can't we find a good, safe loving home for children in 2 months? It is important we do this.

Our family has been through two home studies in our adoption, and I know what a difference how soon and how accurate and how important these home studies can be done. We ought not let a State line get in the way of helping these children.

I can tell you that Tom DeLay has been such an advocate and champion for children. When you see the work of Rio Bend, what he and his wife are doing, it is just remarkable. I strongly support this bill.

Mr. Chairman, as you know, many veterans live hours from major hospitals, making it very difficult for them to get the care they need; and oftentimes, for those who have to travel there two or three times a week, they have a terrible quality of life. That is why our local veterans health care clinics, known as Community-Based Outpatient Clinics, are just so important to deliver quality care for veterans. These have been stalled in recent years; yet, my understanding is that in this bill there is a strong commitment of $25 million to build the highest priority Community-Based Outpatient Clinics in the country. Is that the case?

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Well, let me just conclude with this. One of my communities, Conroe, the veterans and I have worked for a number of years to try to make this a reality. This is great news for our veterans; and, more importantly, I think it is great news for all those communities that will get help for their veterans care, and I will just tell you that we are grateful for Chairman Walsh's leadership. This is just awful good news.

Madam Chairman, I appreciate the bipartisan leadership on this bill. I think sometimes in Washington we would do better to not clear-cut the truth when it comes to issues like this.

Madam Chairman, the truth is when natural disasters hit our forests, as they do in east Texas, our regulations really hinder our ability to recover that forest quickly. They do not help; they hinder it. This bill does the opposite. I strongly support it.

Madam Chairman, in 1998 we had a windstorm that hit the Sabine, Angelina and Sam Houston National Forests here in east Texas, damaged about 200 million boardfeet of timber. As bad as that looks, and as big as that looks, you should have seen what Hurricane Rita did. The fourth largest hurricane to ever hit the gulf coast damaged nearly a million boardfeet of timber, and that is our number one, not only our number one economic driver in east Texas, but we really value our forests. We want to recover them, because that to us was a huge natural disaster.

This bill will help us recover from disasters like this. All of them had salvageable timber; terrible Hurricane damage, but salvageable timber. But because of the large volume of timber that was damaged, the rapid decay of the dead wood, and procedural red tape and economic constraints, salvage operations, the ability to salvage this is limited. And if we do not do that, the down and damaged timber becomes hazardous fuel, endangering the public and firefighter safety.

And all of the remaining undamaged timber becomes highly susceptible to other timber losses, because of bark beetles further impairing the forest health, and blue stain, which affects the timber itself. So failure to remove salvageable timber impedes the restoration of some of our treasured habitat, such as threatened and endangered red cockheaded woodpecker and the Louisiana pine snake.

Madam Chairman, delays to harvesting downed timber means delays and increased costs all across the board, and the ability in this bill to use alternative ways to do it makes healthier forests and better species. Madam Chairman, I strongly support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, Congressman Meek from Florida, for allowing me to reclaim my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join my good friend, Congressman Boustany from Louisiana, in urging our colleagues not to forget the victims of Hurricane Rita as they determine priority funding in the Hurricane supplemental bill that is before the House and the Senate today.

You may know, but, of course, last August Hurricane Katrina, the sixth largest Hurricane in gulf coast history hit the gulf coast. It sent a human tide of over half a million evacuees to Texas. And while our State was struggling with the unprecedented effects of that storm, its own coast took a direct hit from Hurricane Rita, the fourth largest storm in gulf coast history, just 3 weeks later.

As Hurricane Rita grew into one of the most intense storms in recorded history, steering a path through Texas and along the Louisiana border, our State, and especially southeast and east Texas were in the midst of its unprecedented response to Hurricane Katrina.

So our region not only took in evacuees, tens of thousands from Louisiana, and are thrilled that we did, we also took in 2.7 million evacuees from Hurricane Rita, the largest in history.

Then the hurricane shifted; Hurricane Rita went right up those same communities that had already done so much. Rita delivered a devastating blow to the region. As this photo illustrates, the resulting physical damage was massive.

The town of Sabine Pass was leveled. Further inland, entire communities, including houses, businesses, bridges, roads and utilities, were severely damaged or destroyed by Hurricane-force winds and torrential rains.

Over 75,000 Texas homes were damaged or destroyed in Rita, $1 billion of our timber crop, the largest economic driver in east Texas; and today, 10 percent of our Rita evacuees have yet to return. Without homes or without places to work, we are again in a real fight for our lives.

Today we have a number of our Texas leaders, southeast Texas Recovery Team in Washington meeting with the White House, meeting with House leaders, meeting with FEMA and HUD to talk about how Texas can recover.

We had, as I said, 75,000 homes damaged or destroyed. Many of those have temporary blue tarps on today that are starting to deteriorate or blow off. When the hurricane season hits, we will put more and more people out of their homes.

We are asking for about $1 billion in community development block grant funds in housing to help repair those homes, to help get people back in their homes, to help southeast Texas recover.

We are also asking for equal treatment. These are all photos from the Beaumont Enterprise and their special edition on Rita, showing the damage from this region. But as we rebuild, we find that, unfortunately, the Federal Government split Hurricane Rita along State lines, literally provided one assistance to our Louisiana neighbors, and a different level to our Texas neighbors, which is terribly unfair and creates a terrible burden on our Texas communities, many of whom are poor, many with very high minority and poverty rates, all of them eager to help our Louisiana neighbors, but also eager to try to recover ourselves.

So we are up here asking for the same 90/10 reimbursement rate of FEMA that our Louisiana folks have received for the exact same hurricane, same storm, same damage. Different treatment, same storm. It ought to be the same storm, same damage, same treatment.

Mr. Speaker, let me close with this. This Congress, our government, are charged with a duty to wisely allocate precious taxpayer dollars. This hurricane supplement has become a magnet for some less-than- justified projects.

Mr. Speaker, I can tell you this: that the Hurricane Rita assistance in schools of 90/10 and in housing are not only fair and justified, but will go a long way toward helping these communities who did so much for our Louisiana neighbors and are doing so much today to help them recover at a time of terrible need.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Constitutional Caucus headed by Mr. Bishop and Mr. Garrett, who are determined to make sure that government in Washington and in this country is limited to the constitutional role. I appreciate their leadership, because that is too often forgotten in this Chamber. One of the pieces of legislation that helps underscore that need is legislation to create a Federal Sunset Commission, legislation I authored 10 years ago.

I have watched and worked in the State legislature in Texas to promote, and here is the benefits of it. What this does is this Commission seeks to abolish obsolete agencies and eliminate duplication by putting an expiration date on every agency and program where they must justify their existence to taxpayers or face elimination.

What it does, in practice, is eliminate agencies that duplicate each other. And the last study showed that Federal programs, on average, duplicate five others. So we are wasting money terribly.

As President Ronald Reagan said, the closest thing to immortality on this Earth is a Federal program. Our goal is to end immortality, make sure that Federal agencies are responsive to taxpayers and they need our precious tax dollars today; not what they were created for 100 years ago or 80 years ago, but do they deserve our tax dollars today?

The fact of the matter is there is so much duplication, there is so much waste in this government, and we have 500-and-some different urban aid programs, 350 different economic development programs, more than 100 different job training programs, the war on drugs, multiple programs over about 17 different agencies.

It is a terrible waste of tax dollars, and in this day and age when we are fighting a war against terrorism, when we have major deficits, we cannot afford this type of wasteful government.

Our Constitution requires us to trim the Federal Government. In fact, Thomas Jefferson, our third President, wrote a letter to a friend at that time in his Presidency lamenting the fact that he was having trouble cutting back agencies that had outlived their usefulness.

So the fight that we have is an historical fight. We have actually brought this bill up to a vote before in the House. It passed with 272 votes. It did not move further than that. But I am convinced that by assigning agencies, there will be no sacred cows, every agency has to justify their existence.

In Texas we have eliminated 44 State agencies, saved over $1 billion. I am convinced here at the Federal level, done right in a bipartisan way with real commitment, we can save tax dollars. We can make Federal programs accountable to taxpayers and save dollars.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back, again with thanks to Mr. Bishop and Mr. Garrett for leading this caucus at such a key time in our Nation's history.

Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Madam Chairman, I appreciate Chairman Lewis and the hard-working members of the Appropriations Committee who are doing a difficult job trying to balance the needs of our war on terror as well as disaster recovery in the gulf coast.

This amendment seeks to do a simple thing, to require that the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development use the most accurate and timely data for making decisions on where the unmet needs are in the gulf coast for housing. What this says in effect is that the director shall apply the most timely and accurate data available relating to all damages from such hurricanes and the total number of relocated evacuees. In other words, rather than use the FEMA numbers, which are slow, often inaccurate and, in fact, do not track the evacuees from Katrina to other States, nor because Hurricane Rita occurred after Hurricane Katrina, many of the needs in Texas are still being applied for and have not yet registered. So, without this amendment, the HUD Secretary would be making important decisions on housing and repair and renovation without having a true, accurate picture of where the needs truly are.

I know that in Texas we have more than 75,000 homes that have been destroyed or damaged in Hurricane Rita, much of which are not yet in the system. The last decision that the HUD Secretary made, 98 percent of the money went to Louisiana and Mississippi, 1 percent to Texas. Yet Hurricane Rita actually landed a higher wind speed than Hurricane Katrina, wiped out much of East Texas, did billions of dollars of damage, and yet our people are still waiting for help in housing, repair and renovation. So this is simply an amendment to require accurate and timely data and should this not be allowed today.

I hope perhaps we can work with you, because I think we all want the Secretary to use the best picture of these very complicated hurricane issues.

Madam Chairman, I yield back my time.

Point of Order

Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Again, I thank Chairman Lewis for your work on disaster relief.

The point of this amendment is to recognize that the money for disaster assistance ought to go with the victims. The fact of the matter is Hurricane Katrina caused tremendous devastation. I know that Texas is now hosting over 400,000 evacuees and educating nearly 40,000 students. We know other States are also opening their hearts and communities to these Katrina evacuees.

This amendment says that $2 billion from our Community Development Block Grant funds shall be made available for the victims of Hurricane Katrina who are living outside their home State. What we want to do is make sure that they have the housing, the social services, the workforce employment services, all those needs that go with them.

This amendment simply says that, as we have spent billions of dollars responding to Hurricane Katrina, that we not forget the victims of Hurricane Katrina who are in other States and who those communities are bearing the brunt of the expenses of hosting them and, in truth, as newspaper articles and studies reported today across the Nation show, that at the pace of recovery in Louisiana, these States, like Texas, will be host to our Katrina neighbors for many months, perhaps many years. It is important that we not punish the States and communities that open their hearts to these victims, that we not send them a bill that says, thank you for your generosity; here, pay for it, raise your taxes, bear the burden; we have no interest in you.

This amendment makes sure that the dollars follow the victims, the evacuees of Hurricane Katrina, and that we not punish the generosity of the surrounding States who did so much for our Katrina evacuees.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Madam Chairman, I yield back my time.

Point of Order

Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

The purpose of this amendment is to request $2 billion for Texas to help specifically 400,000 of the Hurricane Katrina evacuees who are in our communities, to assist the educational costs of the nearly 40,000 students who we are educating today, and in addition to Hurricane Katrina, help pay for the increased public safety and law enforcement costs that have emerged since being host to our Katrina neighbors.

For health care and mental health: $126 million. Services that have not been compensated again for their help.

For critical infrastructure repairs: $408 million. Because most of the Nation does not know that Hurricane Rita caused tremendous devastation, landed, as I have said before, at a higher wind speed than Hurricane Katrina, created more damage to the electrical grid than Hurricane Katrina, did more damage to the refinery capacity than Katrina, and did almost $1 billion of damage to our timber industry, which is our number one industry in most of the 22 counties directly affected by Rita.

This request, headed by our Governor, Rick Perry, of Texas, made on behalf of the entire Texas congressional delegation, also asks for $54 million for transportation, repair of our roads and bridges from Hurricane Rita, $59 million for navigation waterway repairs. That is because Hurricane Rita caused a damage to our waterways that will require dredging and a great deal of repair.

For our agriculture forestry and rural disaster assistance, $170 million,

because much of Texas that opened their hearts to Katrina are the rural communities that abut Louisiana. They were the ones who opened their shelters for the Katrina victims, opened them a second time for the evacuation of the Houston and gulf coast area, and then on the third big hit actually Hurricane Rita devastated their communities. These are small rural communities and should be commended for all that they have done. This $170 million helps them recover and rebuild their agriculture economy.

For social services, $125 million, mainly for the folks from Katrina but also for some of our dislocated Rita folks.

And then $186 million for community redevelopment, because our recovery is complicated by our Katrina guests. As you know, we have moved them out of hotels into the available housing units; and because Texas had over 75,000 homes damaged or destroyed by Rita, we both no longer have houses for our own families and no housing for the work recovery crews to allow us to get back on our feet.

This also requests $400 million to help pay for our schools who are educating our Katrina neighbors.

Again, we are thrilled to have them. We know if the situation were reversed their hearts and homes would be open to us, but we also know that should that occur that there would be a heavy burden on those other States. We want to make sure that our communities, many of them small, many of them without big budgets, who have done exactly the right thing, exactly the right thing with Katrina and are struggling to recover from their own hurricane, to make sure they are not left behind.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Madam Chairman, I concede the point of order at this time.

Madam Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to offer out of order Brady of Texas amendment No. 1, which would normally come at the end of the bill.

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

While I recognize the difficulty in making in order these amendments because of the way the bill has been written, and rightly so, the purpose of this amendment is to recognize that we ought not stick our schools with the bill for educating our Katrina students.

Again, we have 47 States that are now educating students who fled Hurricane Katrina. Our State, our communities are educating almost 40,000 of them. These schools were the first ones to open their doors both as shelters, and then to try to provide some normalcy for these families who had nothing to go back to. The schools and the teachers, if you could have been there in Texas or in the other States to see what these schools did to embrace these families, you would know the importance that education has played in bringing some structure to these families from Louisiana and Mississippi.

Unfortunately, in our earlier funding, while we recognized the need to reimburse these schools, the number of students, almost 158,000 of them, this body was not able to provide the minimum funding for them. It looks like for this school year, we will come in somewhere less than $4,000, around $4,000, yet the minimal expense is $6,000 as authorized by Congress.

What this amendment does is, basically it does not cut money from any area, but simply reserves $400 million from Community Development Block Grant, it reserves that in abeyance until $400 million is provided to all the States that are housing our Katrina students.

I will tell you again, every State has done a remarkable job. I am very proud of Texas, very proud of southeast Texas and east Texas and these schools and what they have done. I just think it is wrong when they have very little money as it is to require them to perhaps raise taxes or take money from other vital programs in order to do the right thing for our Louisiana and Mississippi neighbors. We ought not treat schools and communities, I think, with such disdain.

This amendment is designed to raise the profile of our schools, to say thank you for the work that you are doing, and to attempt to provide some minimal reimbursement across the country for these schools for the work they are doing for our Katrina students.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Again, I appreciate the work this Appropriations Committee has done to help provide reimbursement for schools. We are hoping to get for this school year that full funding to help them.

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

Point of Order

Madam Chairman, while I may not agree, I concede the point of order.

Offered By: Mr. Brady of Texas

Amendment No. 27: Page 73, line 15, after the colon insert

the following:

Provided further, That not less than $2,000,000,000 from

funds made available under this heading shall be used as

provided under this heading only for the long-term recovery

of areas that are housing victims of Hurricane Katrina who,

at the time of the onset of such hurricane, were residents of

States other than the State in which such area is located:

Offered By: Mr. Brady of Texas

Amendment No. 36: Page 27, strike line 24 and all that

follows through line 5 on page 28.

Page 35, line 20, after the dollar amount, insert the

following: ``(reduced by $5,000,000)''.

Page 36, strike line 14 and all that follows through line

21.

Offered By: Mr. Brady of Texas

Amendment No. 28: Page 35, line 20, after the dollar

amount, insert the following: ``(reduced by

$1,380,500,000)''.

Page 72, line 18, after the dollar amount, insert the

following: ``(increased by $1,380,500,000)''.

Page 73, line 15, after the colon insert the following:

Provided further, That not less than $1,380,500,000 from

funds made available under this heading shall be used as

provided under this heading only for the long-term recovery

of areas that are housing victims of Hurricane Katrina who,

at the time of the onset of such hurricane, were residents of

States other than the State in which such area is located:

Offered By: Mr. Brady of Texas

Amendment No. 29: Page 35, line 20, after the dollar

amount, insert the following: ``(reduced by

$1,380,500,000)''.

Page 72, line 18, after the dollar amount, insert the

following: ``(increased by $1,380,500,000)''.

Offered By: Mr. Brady of Texas

Amendment No. 30: Page 76, after line 20, insert the

following:

Offered By: Mr. Brady of Texas

Amendment No. 31: Page 72, line 25, after the colon insert

the following:

Provided further, That the factors used by the Secretary in

distributing funds made available under this heading shall

apply the most timely and accurate data available relating to

all damages from such hurricanes and total numbers of

relocated evacuees based on their current addresses rather

than their addresses of record at the time of the storms,

and, to the extent possible, the Secretary shall obtain

information from the departments of insurance and tax

appraisal records of States and consult and coordinate with

the Bureau of the Census of the Department of Commerce to

reestimate population, income, and other statistics when

determining estimates for use in connection with amounts made

available under this heading: