Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation entitled the Lower Mississippi River National Historic Site Study Act. This bill will direct the Secretary of the Interior to study the suitability and feasibility of designating sites in Plaquemines Parish along the Lower Mississippi River Area as units of the National Park System. I know there are several of my colleagues across the aisle that do not want to authorize such studies because they only target one area, or because it potentially will cost the Federal Government a modest amount to conduct such a study. I can appreciate those sentiments, but the good news with this particular study, is that the local government feels this is so important to get done, they are willing to pay for all or some of the study if necessary, because they know these sites deserve Federal recognition as a unit of the National Park Service.

This area in Southeastern Louisiana has contributed much to our Nation's history, and there are many stories that have yet to be preserved for future generations. Unless Congress acts to preserve these historical assets, they will be lost forever. That is why I am again for the fourth time, introducing this legislation. It is important that this legislation become law and I look forward to working with my colleagues to enact it.

In order to be designated as a unit in the National Park System, the Department of the Interior must first conduct a special resources study to determine whether an area possesses nationally significant natural, cultural or recreational resources to be eligible for favorable consideration.

This is exactly what my bill does--it asks the Department of the Interior to take the first step in determining what I already know-- that the Lower Mississippi River Area would be a suitable and feasible asset to the National Park Service.

As many from Louisiana are already aware, this area has vast historical significance with cultural history. In the 1500s, Spanish explorers traveled along the banks of the river. In 1682, Robert de LaSalle claimed all the land drained by the area. In 1699, the site of the first fortification on the Lower Mississippi river, known as Fort Mississippi. Since then, it has been home to ten different fortifications, including Fort St. Phillip and Fort Jackson.

Fort St. Philip, which was originally built in 1749, played a key role during the Battle of New Orleans when American soldiers blocked the British Navy from going upriver. Fort Jackson was built at the request of General Andrew Jackson and partially constructed by famous local Civil War General, P.G.T. Beauregard. This fort was the site of the famous Civil War battle known as the ``Battle of Forts'' which is also referred to as the ``night the war was lost.'' As you can see, from a historical perspective, this area has many treasures that provide a glimpse into our past. These are treasures that have national significance and they should be maintained and preserved.

In addition, there are many other important and unique attributes to this area. This area is home to the longest continuous river road and levee system in the U.S. It is also home to the ancient Head of Passes site, to the Plaquemines Bend, and to two National Wildlife Refuges.

Finally, this area has a rich cultural heritage. Over the years, many different cultures have made this area home, including Creoles, Europeans, Indians, Yugoslavs, African-Americans and Vietnamese. These cultures have worked together to create the infrastructure for the transport of our Nation's energy, which is being produced by these same people off our shores in the Gulf of Mexico. They have also created a vibrant fishing industry that contributes to Louisiana's economy.

I think it is easy to see why this area would make an excellent addition to the National Park Service. However, the longer Congress takes to act, the greater the opportunity for these treasures and their rich history to erode away. Unfortunately, this area has weathered the passing of several hurricanes, including Katrina and most recently Isaac, and is now suffering from the impacts of the BP oil spill. All of these events threaten to destroy these historical assets, but this need not be the case. These assets need protection and this is the first step in securing it. That is why I am re-introducing this bill-- to conduct a study to determine the suitability and feasibility of including this area in the system and ultimately to begin the process of adding this area as a unit of the National Park Service. I look forward to working with my colleagues to quickly enact this bill.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to discuss the importance of small businesses in the United States. It cannot be stated enough that small businesses are the economic engines of our country. Small businesses also represent the essence of the American Dream. They are creators of new jobs and innovative technologies. In fact, over the last 15 years, businesses employing less than 500 people have created 93 percent of all new jobs and employed 58.6 million workers. Businesses employing less than 20 people alone employed 21.3 million workers. In my home state of Louisiana, small businesses make up about 98 percent of businesses. As Chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I remain focused on the needs of these small businesses. That is why I am here today to introduce a bill that I believe will help spur job creation among small businesses.

As you know, right now our country is only slowly recovering from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. This economic downturn disproportionately affected small businesses and, in turn, stifled their ability to generate growth for the country. Sadly, since November 2008, 80 percent of the job losses have come from small businesses. An estimated 2.16 million jobs were lost in the private sector from November 2008 through February 2009--nearly 40 percent from businesses with less than 50 employees. Ten jobs lost here and five jobs there add up. These are the job losses that hurt our economy, our communities and our families.

With this in mind, I was proud to lead Congressional efforts to enact the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010, Public Law 111-240. President Obama signed this legislation into law on September 27, 2010. This legislation focused on the three ``C's'' important to small businesses: Capital, Contracting, and Counseling. Today I would like to focus on Capital and more specifically, on the Small Business Administration's 504 Loan Refinancing Program, which unfortunately expired in September 2012.

The 504 loan program is a long-term financing tool for economic development that provides small businesses with long-term, fixed-rate loans to help them acquire major fixed assets and real estate for expansion or modernization. The Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 allowed small businesses to use the 504 loan program to refinance certain qualifying existing debt for 2 years. While loan volumes were relatively low in the program's first year, the SBA made a number of program modifications to encourage and allow more small businesses to take advantage of the long terms and low interest rates offered by the program. In fiscal year 2012, the program's second and final year, the SBA approved over 2,400 refinancings for over $2.2 billion to small businesses.

Unfortunately, on September 27, 2012, the program expired just as it was gaining traction in the small business community. Over the past year, in my conversations with small business owners and in testimonies given in roundtables and hearings before the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I have consistently heard the need to extend this portion of the 504 loan program. The bill that I am introducing today would extend for 5 years the provision allowing small business owners to use Small Business Administration, SBA, 504 loans to refinance existing commercial mortgages. Extending the 504 refinancing program is a commonsense way to help small

businesses and create jobs. By allowing small businesses to refinance qualified commercial real estate debt, this program lowers their monthly mortgage payments at no cost to taxpayers. At a time when we are still facing high unemployment, this extension is one of many things that we should be doing to put more capital in the hands of America's job creators.

I would like to reiterate that this is not a new proposal, and it has consistently received bipartisan support. In total, last year I filed this extension either as a bill or an amendment four times. The 504 refinance provision extension was originally introduced as S. 2364 by Senators Snowe, Landrieu, Isakson, and Shaheen. Title II of the SUCCESS Act, which I introduced during the 112th Congress, also included the refinance provision. On July 12, 2012, the Senate voted on the SUCCESS Act as part of Senate Amendment 2521 to S. 2237, the Small Business Jobs and Tax Relief Act of 2012. Although the amendment came up short of the 60 votes needed to end debate, the SUCCESS Act amendment received a strong 57 bipartisan votes, including five of my Republican colleagues. Finally, I included the provision in a substitute amendment that I cosponsored to the JOBS Act of 2012 and offered the 504 refinancing language as an amendment to the Veterans Jobs Bill. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come together in support of this common-sense, cost effective program.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to discuss the importance of small businesses in the United States. It cannot be stated enough that small businesses are the economic engines of our country. Small businesses also represent the essence of the American Dream. They are creators of new jobs and innovative technologies. In fact, over the last 15 years, businesses employing less than 500 people have created 93 percent of all new jobs and employed 58.6 million workers. Businesses employing less than 20 people alone employed 21.3 million workers. In my home state of Louisiana, small businesses make up about 98 percent of businesses. As Chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I remain focused on the needs of these small businesses. That is why I am here today to introduce a bill that I believe will help spur job creation among small businesses.

As you know, right now our country is only slowly recovering from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. This economic downturn disproportionately affected small businesses and, in turn, stifled their ability to generate growth for the country. Sadly, since November 2008, 80 percent of the job losses have come from small businesses. An estimated 2.16 million jobs were lost in the private sector from November 2008 through February 2009--nearly 40 percent from businesses with less than 50 employees. Ten jobs lost here and five jobs there add up. These are the job losses that hurt our economy, our communities and our families.

With this in mind, I was proud to lead Congressional efforts to enact the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010, Public Law 111-240. President Obama signed this legislation into law on September 27, 2010. This legislation focused on the three ``C's'' important to small businesses: Capital, Contracting, and Counseling. Today I would like to focus on Capital and more specifically, on the Small Business Administration's 504 Loan Refinancing Program, which unfortunately expired in September 2012.

The 504 loan program is a long-term financing tool for economic development that provides small businesses with long-term, fixed-rate loans to help them acquire major fixed assets and real estate for expansion or modernization. The Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 allowed small businesses to use the 504 loan program to refinance certain qualifying existing debt for 2 years. While loan volumes were relatively low in the program's first year, the SBA made a number of program modifications to encourage and allow more small businesses to take advantage of the long terms and low interest rates offered by the program. In fiscal year 2012, the program's second and final year, the SBA approved over 2,400 refinancings for over $2.2 billion to small businesses.

Unfortunately, on September 27, 2012, the program expired just as it was gaining traction in the small business community. Over the past year, in my conversations with small business owners and in testimonies given in roundtables and hearings before the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I have consistently heard the need to extend this portion of the 504 loan program. The bill that I am introducing today would extend for 5 years the provision allowing small business owners to use Small Business Administration, SBA, 504 loans to refinance existing commercial mortgages. Extending the 504 refinancing program is a commonsense way to help small

businesses and create jobs. By allowing small businesses to refinance qualified commercial real estate debt, this program lowers their monthly mortgage payments at no cost to taxpayers. At a time when we are still facing high unemployment, this extension is one of many things that we should be doing to put more capital in the hands of America's job creators.

I would like to reiterate that this is not a new proposal, and it has consistently received bipartisan support. In total, last year I filed this extension either as a bill or an amendment four times. The 504 refinance provision extension was originally introduced as S. 2364 by Senators Snowe, Landrieu, Isakson, and Shaheen. Title II of the SUCCESS Act, which I introduced during the 112th Congress, also included the refinance provision. On July 12, 2012, the Senate voted on the SUCCESS Act as part of Senate Amendment 2521 to S. 2237, the Small Business Jobs and Tax Relief Act of 2012. Although the amendment came up short of the 60 votes needed to end debate, the SUCCESS Act amendment received a strong 57 bipartisan votes, including five of my Republican colleagues. Finally, I included the provision in a substitute amendment that I cosponsored to the JOBS Act of 2012 and offered the 504 refinancing language as an amendment to the Veterans Jobs Bill. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come together in support of this common-sense, cost effective program.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship will meet on February 13, 2013, at 4:00 p.m. in room 432 of the Russell Senate Office building to conduct its organizational meeting.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

I know Senator Harkin is on the floor with others to present several new pieces of legislation or to speak on items pending. I wanted to take a moment of personal privilege to say just a few words about the spectacular sporting event that took place in our country yesterday in the city of New Orleans. I want to, of course, congratulate the Baltimore Ravens, the Senators from Maryland, particularly Senator Mikulski and Senator Cardin, and Governor O'Malley, who was there, of course, representing Maryland; the Senators from San Francisco and California, the 49ers, Senators Feinstein and Boxer, former Speaker Pelosi was with us yesterday in New Orleans, and thousands of fans from all over the world and, of course, watching on television.

I wanted to make a note on this floor, not because it was just a sporting event, although it was one of the highest watched Super Bowls ever in the history of the game, but because of the role this Congress played and the administration in helping this great city and region and State rebound from what was a devastating body blow 7\1/2\ years ago with Hurricane Katrina and then Rita hit 3 weeks later and then the levees broke in over 52 places. The city went virtually underwater--at least two-thirds of the city.

To see, 7\1/2\ years later, the city rebound, the people of New Orleans and Louisiana are just foremost in my thoughts right now for their fighting spirit, their resiliency, their unwillingness to give up on this special place that will celebrate its 300th birthday in 2018. I want to say a special thank-you to Mayor Landrieu, John Young, president of Jefferson Parish, the leaders of St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parish. Those parishes were virtually destroyed, the lower part of Jefferson Parish. The whole region has come back. The world could see it for themselves yesterday--the civic leadership, the faith- based leadership. Again, a shout out to President Obama, his Cabinet and the Members on both sides of the aisle who stood by this region, the gulf coast, to rebuild after all these years.

In conclusion, it is my only hope that after passing the Sandy supplemental, we will stand united with the Northeast as they rebuild bigger, better, stronger, hosting the next Super Bowl which is a real symbol of resurgence and rebuilding and resurrection.

I yield the floor.

I thank my colleague for her extraordinary, robust, and enthusiastic leadership on this important piece of legislation that will send hope and help to the Northeast, to the dozens of counties throughout New York, New Jersey, and even the State of Maryland and other States that are waiting on pins and needles for our action.

It has been too long. We have sent too many different signals out from this Capitol. The people following this debate--the mayors, the county commissioners, the school board members, the citizens, the pastors of churches, the principals of schools--need to hear today a big yes from Congress and a yes from the President that help is on the way.

Believe me, as a Senator from Louisiana, I have unfortunately become an expert on disasters and disaster recovery, and I can tell you from personal experience and testimony the importance of every action we take regarding this recovery so that the private sector--and I want my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to hear this--not taxpayer money but the private sector will have the confidence that the government will be there, and they themselves will begin to invest.

This is a big effort, and we have already delayed this far longer than it should have been because we have been arguing over offsets.

I want to put in the Record this statement:

When our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan needed ammunition, equipment, and better protection against roadside bombs, we sent them what they needed as quickly as we could get it there. We didn't make them wait, sitting around bandaging their wounds, while we debated about offsets and how we were going to deal with those explosives. We should respond with the same sense of urgency to our fellow citizens and address emergency needs on U.S. soil.

It has already been 3 months since Hurricane Sandy. If this Lee amendment is adopted, it will be delayed further. I strongly oppose the Lee amendment, and I wish to talk a minute more about why, and then I will turn it over to Senator Schumer and others on the floor.

We should not use disasters as an excuse to push ideology, and that is, I am afraid, what the other side is doing. They want to look for any excuse to cut the budget. I want to say again that we have already cut this budget by $1.5 trillion. And I want to say for the 11th, 12th, 13th time that we are never going to cut our way to a balanced budget. I want my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to hear it. We are not going to cut our way to a balanced budget. It is going to be a combination of revenue increases and cuts, which I am all for. And the last negotiation we did was exactly that. Vice President Biden and President

Obama negotiated a combination of revenues and reductions.

All the Lee amendment does is reduce again. He does not offer one new penny to pay for this. He wants to cut it from veterans, he wants to cut it from firefighters, he wants to cut it from police officers. I am not going to join him. It is a wrongheaded approach. If we want to find a way to pay for disasters, I will show up and negotiate with anybody, but it is not going to be just by cutting the defense budget or discretionary budgets. If it is going to be about raising additional revenues and cutting, you will have me. Until then, put me down as a no.

I suggest to all my colleagues today that they vote no on the Lee amendment, if we get to these votes, and yes on the underlying bill.

One more word about the underlying bill because the Senators from the region know it much better than I do. I agree with our chairman, the Senator from Maryland. The Senate bill was far better in some ways. Not only did it have a little more money in it, but it had some important tools for reform. Unfortunately, the House stripped some of those out, and some of them will affect the gulf coast in a negative way.

There were commonsense things, such as a loan modification provision that would have forced FEMA to actually calculate the repayment in a rational way instead of an irrational way, which would have helped some of the parishes in Louisiana. Senator Vitter and I fought very hard for that. We think it is fiscally responsible. We think it is the right thing to do. But the House stripped it. We are still going to vote--I hope he will, and I know I will--for this bill because, again, we can't make perfect the enemy of the good. This is a good bill which the people need. We are not going to get every reform we had sought, but we are going to get the bulk of them.

I thank Republicans and Democrats on the House side--Peter King, Nita Lowey--who came together to preserve some of the reforms because it would have been like sending money with dull tools. That is a waste of taxpayer money. We want to send the money and the toolbox with sharp tools that people can use, and that is what we put in this bill. So I am proud to have worked on that part.

There are many other parts. No leader was better than Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand, Senator Menendez, and Senator Lautenberg, but I am proud of the part we worked on, preserving the reforms we learned we needed. Now I am happy to be able to give some of that help to the people of the Northeast even though some of our provisions were stripped out.

So again, Madam President, I oppose the Lee amendment that is made in order in the consent agreement. I want to re-state my position that we should not insist on budget offsets as a pre-requisite for helping disaster victims in this country.

Since 2011, Congress has already approved $1.5 trillion of spending cuts on discretionary programs over 10 years. We approved cuts in the fiscal year 2011 Continuing Resolution and in the fiscal year 2012 Omnibus spending bill. We established long-term caps on discretionary spending in the Budget Control Act of 2011 and we further reduced those caps in the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012.

For fiscal year 2013 alone, we have cut discretionary spending by over $109 billion, or over 9 percent.

The Lee amendment would lay on another $6.3 billion cut in fiscal year 2013, including cuts in defense, veterans programs, homeland security programs, critical infrastructure programs that will generate job growth, cuts in small business programs, and even $250 million of cuts in the Hurricane Sandy response and rebuilding funding that is now before us. On top of those cuts, the Lee amendment would require cutting another $44.9 billion by fiscal year 2021.

I urge a ``no'' vote on the Lee amendment.

I support H.R. 152 and urge Members to oppose the Lee amendment. The bill includes $50.5 billion of critical and timely assistance following Hurricane Sandy. If approved, Congress will have provided $60.2 billion to help the victims of Hurricane Sandy rebuild their homes and businesses and to make their communities more resilient from future disasters.

This is no status quo bill. The victims of Hurricane Katrina and Rita learned the hard way that some of our Nation's disaster rebuilding laws are needlessly bureaucratic. Having learned these lessons, the Stafford Act reforms contained in this bill will help ensure that the victims of Hurricane Sandy will not have to repeat this history. The key reforms included in the bill will dramatically improve our Nation's ability to cope with catastrophic events like Hurricane Sandy. In addition to these reforms, this bill contains significant funding to mitigate future losses of life and property.

It has now been more than 3 months since Hurricane Sandy claimed the lives of more than 130 Americans, severely impacting over 340,000 homes and 200,000 businesses, and leaving more than 8.5 million families without power, heat, or running water. The scale of this disaster has created significant housing and transportation challenges, and successful recovery will require a sustained effort at the Federal, State, and local level, from government, private businesses, and voluntary organizations.

By and large, the Federal Government's response to Hurricane Sandy has been robust. Over 525,000 people have registered for temporary housing and other individual assistance, FEMA has provided 14 million meals, over 16 million liters of water, over 1.6 million blankets, and over 100,000 tarps. DOD delivered over 9.3 million gallons of gasoline to 300 gas stations. Over 470 million gallons of salt water were pumped out of transit and highway tunnels and other structures. At the peak of the response, 17,000 Federal personnel and over 11,000 National Guardsmen were involved: I commend the thousands of first responders, volunteers, and neighbors who have worked tirelessly to help those in need.

Twelve States and the District of Columbia have been declared major disaster areas as a result of Hurricane Sandy, and their citizens will require significant resources to recover.

While FEMA has sufficient funds in the Disaster Relief Fund to make it to March--the current balance is $3.4 billion--the victims of Hurricane Sandy should not have to wait any longer to know that Congress is committed to rebuilding their communities and helping small businesses come back to life. FEMA has already spent over $3.3 billion responding to Hurricane Sandy and as we move from the response and recovery phases to the rebuilding phase, there will be significant costs for housing, highways, transit, hospitals, beach restoration and other public infrastructure, and for mitigation efforts to reduce loss of life and damage to property from future disasters, by backing up power supplies, strengthening flood protection infrastructure, retrofitting facilities, and other measures. The bill that is before us contains $11.5 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund to continue these efforts.

SBA has approved more than $1.2 billion in loans to more than 16,000 homeowners and small businesses. Funding provided in the supplemental will enable SBA to continue processing and approving loan applications at the pace of over 1,000 new loan closings per week. H.R. 152 contains over $800 million to continue this assistance.

The Federal funding contained in this bill is necessary, appropriate, and important to helping the victims of Hurricane Sandy recover. But money isn't the only thing our government must provide. Effective tools and smartly designed programs will be equally vital to the northeast region's recovery.

I co-authored these reforms to facilitate a faster, smarter, more strategic, and more cost-effective recovery process. FEMA has estimated they will save hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and reduce construction delays, protracted funding disputes, and bureaucratic waste.

They are the product of dozens of hearings I held over the course of 6 years as chair of the Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery and the Subcommittee on Homeland Security Appropriations, as well as extensive consultation with State and local officials across the country, private and nonprofit organizations, engaged in disaster relief, numerous Federal agencies

including FEMA and HUD, and stakeholders throughout the emergency management community.

Many were drawn from legislation I introduced in 2011 with my friend and colleague from the State of Mississippi, Senator Cochran, who has endured the same disasters as my own State of Louisiana, and whose contributions to the gulf coast's recovery and the development of this legislation have been tremendous. I am grateful for his partnership in this endeavor.

I would also like to note the considerable contributions of the House of Representatives, which passed FEMA reform legislation last year that included several of these provisions. Following Senate passage of these reforms on December 28 by a vote of 62-32, the House adopted the package by a vote of 403-0 and agreed to include it in the comprehensive Supplemental legislation that is now before us.

I am particularly grateful to Senator Cochran, Senator Lieberman, Senator Collins, and Congressmen Shuster, Rahall, Denham, Congresswoman Holmes Norton, Congressman Mica, Congresswomen Slaughter, Lowey, and Congressmen Alexander, and Richmond for their considerable efforts to advance these critical reforms.

The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act authorizes the majority of FEMA's disaster assistance programs. It was enacted in 1988, amended in 2000 to incorporate several mitigation programs, and revised again in 2006 to address response failures after Hurricane Katrina.

These were important changes, but the law has never been re-visited to address recovery, and our emergency management system remains woefully inadequate in that respect.

Senator Cochran and I succeeded in enacting several key reforms in the months and years that followed Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to facilitate a smarter approach to recovery, but those reforms only applied to the 2005 hurricanes.

The State I represent has been battered by disasters during my time in the Senate. We endured Hurricane Katrina and Rita in 2005, Hurricane Gustav and Ike in 2008, the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in 2010, historic Mississippi River flooding and Tropical Storm Lee in 2011, and Hurricane Isaac last August. Through the course of these harrowing events, I have witnessed numerous systemic failures, misguided policies, bottlenecks, management gaps, and squandered opportunities in the way we go about facilitating community recovery after a disaster.

As a result of those experiences, I have dedicated a significant amount of my time and energy in the Senate to fixing these problems so the people of the gulf coast and Americans everywhere can rely on Federal programs that are sensibly designed and effectively managed to help families and communities in their time of need.

That time has come for millions in the northeastern United States still reeling from the devastating impacts of Hurricane Sandy. For their sake, we cannot afford to wait any longer for these critical reforms.

Let me highlight these reforms:

Reauthorization of two expired pilot programs from the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act that allow FEMA to repair rental units as a cost-effective temporary housing alternative to trailers and mobile homes and to utilize expedited debris removal procedures. Both programs were determined by FEMA to speed recovery and save taxpayers millions of dollars; allowing a State to draw down a portion of its hazard mitigation funding from FEMA, in order to leverage mitigation opportunities earlier in the reconstruction process. Under the current program, it typically takes 18 to 36 months for funding to become available. By then, most reconstruction is already complete or underway, and numerous mitigation opportunities have been lost; providing grants on the basis of reliable fixed estimates for expedited removal of storm-related debris and reconstruction of damaged facilities and infrastructure. This approach will be faster, cheaper, and more effective for everyone involved. The Public Assistance program as currently designed may be the most dysfunctional program in the entire Federal Government, and it simply will not work for this disaster. Under the current approach, initial damage estimates are often incomplete, projects must be re-versioned multiple times, decisions are often not made in writing, frequent staff turnover leads to decision reversals, hundreds of meetings result in incalculable administrative waste, and it takes years for a project to be completed. Individual paper tickets are filled out for each tree limb collected off a roadway, which are measured and photographed by debris contractors, who are in turn followed around by monitoring contractors. A $1.2 million Youth Study Center in New Orleans that was damaged by Katrina has been the subject of 182 meetings over the course of 8 years. The process is severely broken. FEMA and communities across the gulf coast, who have suffered through this bureaucratic quagmire, are in agreement that there is a better way to clean-up and rebuild. It's up to the Congress to provide that smarter approach; codifying temporary legislative measures that were enacted to facilitate a smarter recovery after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, including third- party arbitration of disputes over project eligibility and cost, eliminating the penalty on alternate projects that stifles smarter rebuilding, and authority to consolidate facilities into a single project so school districts, police, fire, and public works departments can strategically plan reconstruction without having to rebuild everything exactly as it was before. After Rita for example, these reforms allowed the Iberia Parish School Board in Louisiana to relocate Peebles Elementary School to a new location outside the floodplain without paying a Federal penalty for rebuilding safer and smarter. It also allowed the Orleans Parish School Board to reduce the number of schools in New Orleans by one-third after determining through its Master Plan that dozens were no longer needed; allowing families to use FEMA Individual Assistance funds for disaster-related child care expenses so parents can get back to work and rebuilt their home or business sooner; reducing bureaucratic waste by eliminating duplicative agency reviews for the same project and the same set of laws governing environmental, historic preservation, and benefit-cost requirements; helping the environment by incentivizing recycling of debris and allowing locals to keep the proceeds; eliminating a perverse incentive in the law to use high-priced contract labor for emergency work instead of local government employees, such as firefighters and police officers, which will save the Federal Government millions of dollars; correcting a gap in current law that prohibits tribal governments from requesting Federal assistance after a disaster in the same way that States are authorized to do.

This legislation does not eliminate State or local cost-share requirements, establish new grant programs, or provide Stafford Act assistance to private sector entities. Instead, it sharpens the tools in the Federal Government's toolbox so that disaster-affected communities can recover more quickly.

The legislation's potential to reduce future property damage, strengthen local capacity, expedite rebuilding, and eliminate duplication and administrative waste, will save taxpayers a tremendous amount of money on Hurricane Sandy as well as future disasters. It will also save communities in the northeast a tremendous amount of time, paperwork, and unnecessary agony.

I urge my colleagues to support these important reforms and the supplemental appropriations measure now before the Senate.

While I commend the House of Representatives for providing robust funding for Sandy recovery efforts and including important reforms to the Stafford Act, I am disappointed that the House leadership decided to strip out provisions to help disaster-affected communities in other parts of the country.

Some people have referred to those provisions as ``pork.'' I think we should be careful what we refer to as ``pork'' around here. The Senate's provisions were all disaster-related, and this was a disaster assistance bill. For communities around the country that have been failed by Federal programs that ignore legitimate disaster-related needs, and failed also by a Congress that continues to underfund or zero out Federal disaster accounts, they expect

their representatives in Congress to stand up and fight for them to deliver relief.

The House of Representatives blocked that relief when it stripped out 97 percent of the fisheries assistance money, struck language authorizing the Corps of Engineers to address critical needs along the Mississippi River, and eliminated a provision to correct FEMA's deeply flawed Federal formula for local governments' disaster-related debt relief. It was wrong of the House leadership to turn their backs on the rest of the country by terminating these provisions, and the record should reflect that fact very clearly.

Finally, Madam President, I thank Senator Mikulski for her support of this critical legislation and urge a ``yea'' vote on the bill. I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield?

Mr. President, I thank the chairlady. Is it not the opinion of the Senator from Maryland that if the Lee amendment gets on this bill, it will, in fact, kill the Sandy supplemental? Isn't that the Senator's understanding of what will happen if the Lee amendment is adopted?

Is it not the understanding of the Senator from Maryland that if the Lee amendment gets adopted--which I don't believe it will--the bill will be either killed or in serious danger of passing?

Mr. President, how much time is remaining?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 of those 5 minutes?

I thank my colleagues.

Let me say that it is my clear view and opinion that if the Lee amendment is passed, the Sandy supplemental will die. There is strong feeling--led by this Senator from Louisiana, to the Senators who are arguing for that position--that if we want to debate about how to pay for a disaster, I will do that. We will do 50 percent cuts and 50 percent revenue, but they never will offer one penny of new revenues to pay for anything. I am not budging on this point. This amendment, if adopted, will kill this bill.

I will go 50 percent revenue. We will raise $25 billion, and $25 billion we will cut, but I am not going to keep cutting the discretionary budget--which, by the way, is not out of control despite what we hear on Fox News. It is mandatory spending that is rising rapidly because the ``greatest generation,'' which gave us the greatest Nation the world has ever heard of, is aging, and they need hospice care, Social Security, and hospitals. If they want to cut them, go right ahead. I am going to be a little more gentle.

No. 2, we can do this together if we want. So just know this argument is not a small argument for the chair of the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee nor for our colleagues.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I regret having missed the January 24, 2013, vote on S. Res. 15, a resolution to improve procedures for the consideration of legislation and nominations in the Senate. Had I been present, I would have voted in favor of S. Res. 15.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I came to the floor this afternoon to speak briefly about Hurricane Sandy and what the Senate and the House could and should be doing to help the survivors of this catastrophic disaster that occurred now over 3 months ago on the northeast coast. We from Louisiana are very familiar, unfortunately, with disasters. We have had quite a number over the past several years. Unfortunately, I have become an expert on disasters. I don't want to be, but I am becoming one as chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and as a leader from Louisiana. All of us, whether we are school board members, city council members, mayors, parish officials or Governors from Louisiana, are becoming experts on disasters because we are having a lot of them.

So I came to the floor to say just a few things this afternoon about Hurricane Sandy. First, I wish to begin by saying the people of the Northeast--and they don't need me to tell them this--have a wonderfully strong delegation in the Senate, Senators Schumer, Gillibrand, Menendez, and Lautenberg. Of course, in Maryland--though we don't hear much about Maryland, there were one or two small counties that were terribly affected in Maryland--and Senator Cardin and Senator Mikulski have been, day in and day out, working with me and with many others, of course, trying to fashion a robust and smart response to the disaster on the East Coast.

We want it to be smart because the taxpayers don't want to waste money on things that don't work. Of course, the survivors want it to be smart because they need us to do our best work now. We can't be late and sloppy and bureaucratic. They have churches to rebuild and faith- based organizations to get back up and running. There are schools and libraries and, most importantly, of course, their homes and their businesses. So this is very important work.

It has been difficult because there are many different philosophies about how to tackle this. I have made my positions fairly clear on certain aspects such as offsets, et cetera. But today I wanted to come to the floor to just acknowledge the extraordinary work of the delegation--led in large measure by Senator Schumer--of Members who have been absolutely rolling up their sleeves at every meeting and trying to build bipartisan support, which we have to do in the Senate. The House can sometimes get away with sending things over here with only the Republicans voting for it and no Democrats, but over here we can't get anything done unless it is done with all of us together. It is just a different set of rules in the Senate, so we have had to work very hard.

Senators Schumer and Gillibrand and other Members worked very hard to get together the necessary votes to get that $60 billion out of here a couple weeks ago. The House, of course, unfortunately, stripped away some provisions but, happily--happily--they left some of the best reforms we have been able to think of in the last 4 or 5 years in the bill, and that is what I wish to talk about today.

I am a big believer in sending aid to the people in America who need it. We send a lot of aid overseas, and we will sure send a lot of aid when we rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq, but I am a real big believer in sending aid to our own taxpayers when their homes are flooded or tornadoes have taken out their area or fires have raged out of control or major storms have hit their area. I am a big believer that when people pay taxes all their life--middle-class families as well as the poor and the working poor, as well as the wealthy, who pay a lot of taxes--they deserve their government to respond when they are at a very dark moment. That is what is happening on the east coast, and these constituents and citizens of ours could not get this help. They need it more quickly.

We are moving as fast as we can--not fast enough for this Senator, but hopefully we can get this vote and this bill to the President's desk. I know President Obama will be happy to sign this and is eager to sign it. I wish to also say thank you to President Obama for his strong support of a robust supplemental and to say how proud I am to have worked with his Cabinet, many of whom are involved in this recovery, and particularly the Secretary of HUD, who is probably one of the most able leaders. All the Cabinet members are very able, but the Secretary of HUD is particularly knowledgeable about rebuilding in a more coordinated fashion because he actually got to practice on us down in the gulf coast. We were kind of like the guinea pigs. Hopefully, we have worked out a lot of the problems and we can take all the best practices and lessons learned.

But Shaun Donovan will do a great job leading that effort on the east coast, I have no doubt, with both a very strong Democratic Governor and a very strong Republican Governor--Governor Christie and Governor Cuomo in that area--along with Mayor Bloomberg and Mayor Cory Booker and so many other small-town officials involved in the recovery. They will have a great friend and a knowledgeable and reliable partner in Secretary of HUD Shaun Donovan.

But let me go into just a few things we were able to redesign, thinking that our citizens and our constituents want government to be leaner. They want government, most importantly, to be smarter and more efficient, and I could not agree more. We have tried, at least in the disaster recovery--when the response to Katrina and Rita was such a disaster itself--to reshape some of this and make it better and smarter. So we put some very effective and smartly designed programs into the Sandy supplemental.

I want to begin by thanking my friend and colleague from the State of Mississippi, Senator Cochran, who joined me in introducing the Disaster Recovery Act in 2011 that contained many of these reforms. Our States have endured the same series of disasters and bureaucratic roadblocks to recovery over the past eight years, and we are determined to prevent communities in the northeast from experiencing the same inefficiency and waste. His contributions to the Gulf Coast's recovery and the development of this legislation have been tremendous, and I am grateful for his partnership in this endeavor.

I also wish to thank my House colleagues, particularly Congressman Shuster, Congressman Rahall, Congressman Denham, Delegate Holmes- Norton, Congressman Mica, who is the outgoing chair of the committee over there and was so instrumental in helping to fashion some of this, Congresswoman Slaughter, Congresswoman Lowey, Congressman Alexander and Congressman Richmond. In particular,

Cedric Richmond, who is from Louisiana and a dear friend, along with Congressman Alexander, from my home State, were very instrumental in helping their colleagues--one is a Republican, one is a Democrat--kind of understand why it is important to have these reforms stay in the bill, and they were successful. I am very grateful to them for that.

One of the things from the several lists of things that were in this bill--and that I want to put into the Record--I will just go over and highlight briefly.

No. 1, in the Sandy supplemental, it will reauthorize two expired pilot programs from the post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act that allowed FEMA to repair rental units as a cost-effective temporary housing alternative to trailers and mobile homes and to utilize expedited debris removal procedures.

This might not seem very interesting to people, unless you and your family are looking at living in an 8-by-16 or 8-by-24 trailer for the next 6 months. Then you are very interested. In the old days, when Katrina happened, all people were given were trailers and, in some instances, with formaldehyde in them, which made for a lovely and very healthy way to live for 6 months. We don't want to go over the nightmares of what happened after Katrina and Rita, but we decided we had to give our citizens some other options besides trailers. So if something would happen in Massachusetts, Madam President, your Governor and your local officials could come together and maybe be a little bit creative in thinking about some rental repairs, where maybe people could move into some of the blighted properties. That would also help with the blight. Instead of spending $120,000 per trailer, maybe we could do a little investing in some blight reduction and, at the same time, giving people a temporary place to live. So that is smart. I think taxpayers appreciate it when we try to spend their money in a wiser, built-to-last kind of way. That is what the Sandy supplemental allows.

It also allows the State to draw down a portion of its hazard mitigation funds from FEMA in order to leverage mitigation opportunities earlier in the reconstruction process. In the old days, it would take 18 to 36 months for funding to become available, in some instances, to rebuild a school. That is too long. Can you imagine a community going 3 years without even getting their school started?

I realize sometimes it takes a long time to build things, but you don't want to wait 3 years before you start. So the way we do it now, without spending any more money, is just allowing the Federal Government to push out some of the front money to the locals so they can get started on mitigation projects much sooner. So that is a very smart reform that is included.

In addition, we also provide grants on the basis of reliable fixed estimates for rebuilding damaged infrastructure and facilities and expedited removal of storm debris. This approach will be faster, cheaper, and more effective. The Public assistance program as currently designed may be one of the most dysfunctional programs in the entire Federal Government and will not work for this disaster. Under the current approach, initial damage estimates are often incomplete. Projects must be reversioned multiple times. Decisions are often not made in writing. Frequent staff turnover leads to decision reversals. Hundreds of meetings result in incalculable administrative waste. And it can take years for even a small project to be completed. And let me just put this in English.

What this means is in the old days when Katrina hit--and people are not going to believe it when I say this, but it is true, and I will put this in the Record so people can go find it. But in the old days we would have to take measurements and pictures of a tree to determine how wide the branch was because if it was more than 3 inches you got reimbursed, and if it was less than that you didn't. We would have to go take pictures of trees where the debris came down to try to get the paperwork necessary for the reimbursement. Those days are hopefully over with.

We will now do kind of an estimate just like any normal, rational person would do. You know from past storms how much debris is usually there. You could sort of measure that. There are ways--not just subjective but objective, like geospatial modeling, without having to take pictures of limbs on trees and measure them individually--which is a complete waste of time and wholly irrational and, of course, survivors who are standing there without a house are wondering why government officials are going around taking pictures of shrubs. So we need to move past that. Hopefully, we will with some of this legislation.

No. 4 codifies temporary legislative measures that were enacted to facilitate smarter recovery, including third-party arbitration, eliminating penalties on alternate projects, and consolidating facilities into a single project. This was my most important thing, and I would like to take a minute to explain it to everyone.

A while after Katrina, which was a nightmare, I kept wondering why these project worksheets were never getting settled. We would send thousands of these worksheets to the Federal Government and say: This was our library. We estimate it will cost $5 million to rebuild it.

The Federal Government would say: No, we think it is $2.5 million. That is all we owe you.

So I said: I can understand there could be a disagreement. Who resolves it? No one. What do you mean, no one? No one. It just keeps going around and around, and we just keep sending paper back.

I said: Is there any timeline for the resolution? No. I said: Is there any third-party arbitrator? No. So we put in a third-party arbitrator so that if a project is disagreed to by the locals about what was there, what it looked like, how they should rebuild it, we now have a rational way to step in and get a decision, and it is nonnegotiable. You can't appeal it. But it is better than not having a decision. The local governments really support this, and I am happy we could get that done.

In addition--this was one of my favorites--everyone would run around giving press conferences about how we were going to build smarter and stronger and better, et cetera. Except when we looked into the law and actually read the law, it was illegal. If you tried to move a police station like 10 feet to get it out of the way of the river, or the land had sunk and you wanted to move it to higher ground, you would actually be penalized 25 percent because it became an alternate project since it wasn't exactly the same. So I said: We don't want to build the exact same thing. That was the problem to begin with. Some of our buildings were in places they shouldn't have been. Some of our buildings were built with materials we should never have used. So why are we having to rebuild the same old thing?

Well, that was because that was what the law said. I said: Well, the law needs to be changed, and we are changing it.

So I hope people, while they fuss at government--and I know we have a lot to do to get things straight--know a lot of thought has gone into some of these reforms, and they are based on real-life experiences on what communities have gone through. Hopefully, the Northeast will benefit from this as we go forward.

Let me just put a few more things in the Record. No. 5 allows families to use FEMA individual assistance for childcare expenses.

Here is another thing we found. We do depend on individual citizens to rebuild their communities. Trust me. The Federal Government may send a lot of money, but they didn't gut houses. Do you know who gutted houses? The churches helped, the volunteers helped, and seniors. Many veterans who had fought the war in the ``greatest generation,'' they, at 80 years old, put on gloves and overalls and gutted their own houses.

I mean take your house down to the studs. It is a hard thing to do. Not only is it physically hard, it is emotionally devastating. The Federal Government did not come in and gut people's houses. We had to gut our houses by ourselves.

After we sorted our debris by EPA requirements and dragged it out to the sidewalk and made sure it didn't touch a part of the lawn--because if it did, they couldn't pick it up because they can't go on private property to pick up debris. It is a nightmare. But this is going to be alleviated because parents and grandparents need to get back to gut their homes. They have to have a

place for their kids to go that is safe. You can't have children running around in dangerous places. So people aren't thinking about this in a recovery, but schools have to be up and running, and you really should be able to use some of this money for daycare so the parents can work. Some of them quit their jobs to rebuild their homes. They lived off their savings and they went back to work. It is a tough situation.

But I am happy, and I want to thank Mark Shriver, Save the Children, and the National Commission on Children and Disasters who led this initiative trying to help us focus on the storms of the future, what we could do better to help children to make sure their needs are cared for. We think about adults, but, of course, most of these families have kids, sometimes young children. So we have done a little bit. I wish we could have done more, but we negotiated the best we could, and at least we got the childcare provision in.

It reduces bureaucratic waste by eliminating duplicative agency reviews for the same project and the same set of laws governing environmental, historic preservation, and benefit-cost requirements. It also helps the environment by incentivizing recycling of debris. So if we can find a way to recycle it, then people get paid a little bit more as opposed to just throwing it in the landfills. We think that will be a good opportunity to try to promote some good technologies for recycling. And--this is very important--it also corrects a gap in current law that prohibited tribal governments from requesting Federal assistance. They were completely prohibited under the former law. Really, as a matter of fair policy and the Federal law, tribes should be able to request some assistance as well, and that was corrected in this piece of legislation.

It also, finally, eliminates a perverse incentive in the law to use high-priced contract labor for emergency work instead of local government employees, such as firefighters and police officers, which should save the Federal Government millions of dollars.

In closing, I want to thank all of the different organizations that helped to pass this: the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, the National Association of County Organizations, International Association of Emergency Managers, International Association of Firefighters, International Association of Fire Chiefs, and the Association of State Floodplain Managers.

This is not a subject that is always fun to talk about because when you are talking about it, it is a lot of suffering that is going on, whether it is Joplin, MO, or Gulfport, MS, or New Orleans, LA, or New York, NY, or the boardwalk in New Jersey. And many of those not-so- small beach communities are very highly populated. There is a lot of suffering. But it is important for us to try, when we can, when we see that the response is not what it should be, to take the time to push out some reforms, to fix what we can fix so that the $60 billion that I hope we will send to them can be used smartly, quickly, and efficiently.

I am living proof of a Senator who has had to literally help lead the rebuilding of the gulf coast, along with my friends from Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. My hometown is New Orleans. My brother is now the mayor, and he is rebuilding that city every day. Eighty percent of the residential communities on the east bank were destroyed completely. That would be like 80 percent of the District of Columbia but not Anacostia, but 80 percent--which would be the whole other side of DC on this side of the river--being uninhabitable. It is hard for people to get their head around that scale. I think Massachusetts has experienced some of these storms. But the scale and scope of the loss is just hard to get your head around. Even though it is not on the 5 o'clock news or the 6 o'clock news or 10 o'clock news or now 24-hour news, it is still happening. So this money and these reforms are important.

So I hope the Senate will act quickly this week. We may have to take up a few amendments from the minority. We have already had the debate about offsets, and we have decided that in the middle of the battle we don't have to argue about who is going to pay for the bullets. We need to go ahead and send the money, and we will figure out how to pay for it later. We are going to pay for it. It is not a question of whether it is going to be repaid. It will be paid for. We should not be arguing about that while the water is rising or while people are gutting their homes or worshiping in tents along the beach. They need their churches back, they need their communities back, and we need to send them money and the smarter tools to help them with the recovery.

So I again thank so many colleagues for helping with this, particularly Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins, who led a lot of these efforts through their leadership of the Homeland Security Committee and spent a significant amount of time along with their staff reviewing and helping to improve this legislation, as well as my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee on Homeland Security.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the period of morning business be extended until 6 p.m. today, and that all provisions of the previous order remain in effect.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Catherine D. Kimball, who is scheduled to retire in 2013. It was 1975 and the courtroom was packed in New Roads, LA. The people in the courtroom weren't there to hear the ruling on the salesman who allegedly scammed an elderly gentleman. They were there to see Catherine D. Kimball--the first female lawyer to argue a case in the New Roads courtroom. Catherine Kimball, affectionately known as ``Kitty'', later became the first female Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court. She will retire on February 1, 2013 and I rise today to offer remarks about this very accomplished woman.

Chief Justice Kimball brought a diverse legal background to the bench and exemplified leadership as a Justice on the Louisiana Supreme Court. While breaking the glass ceiling, she demonstrated a commitment to juvenile justice and legal scholarship. Chief Justice Kimball is truly a pioneer in the Louisiana legal community and a great legal scholar.

Catherine Kimball decided to attend law school during her freshman year of college. So in 1966, after earning her Bachelor of Arts at Louisiana State University, she enrolled at LSU law school. While attending law school, the future Louisiana Chief Justice met Clyde Kimball on a blind date. The two were married in January of 1967. By 1970, Chief Justice Kimball was graduating law school with two children and another on the way. After graduating from law school, she clerked for a Federal judge in Alexandria, LA before returning to Baton Rouge, LA to investigate construction fraud allegations in the Attorney General's office. In 1975, the family moved to New Roads where she opened her private practice in New Roads, LA.

Although Chief Justice Kimball enjoyed success early in her career, she also faced her share of adversity. At one point, she sat down with the president of the bank to discuss borrowing money for her law practice. The bank president informed her that her husband had to sign off on her loan. Chief Justice Kimball said, ``Excuse me--are you not aware of the new law that just passed? My husband does not have to sign a note for me to borrow for my law office.'' She was committed to succeed despite all obstacles.

As a result of her perseverance, Chief Justice Kimball became the first female judge in the 18th Judicial District in Louisiana in 1983. Members of the legal community quickly recognized her talent and potential and in short order, the legal community encouraged her to run for the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Kimball hesitated, saying she loved working as a district judge too much to leave that behind. Nevertheless, she became the first woman elected to the Louisiana Supreme Court in 1992.

Chief Justice Kimball demonstrated strong leadership skills soon after joining the court. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when then Louisiana Chief Justice Pascal Calogero was evacuated from his home in New Orleans and displaced in Dallas, he turned to Justice Kimball for support. Chief Justice Kimball served as the court's point person and worked with FEMA to get reimbursements and get the courts and lawyers back to work in New Orleans. That was the beginning of a long road ahead as Chief Justice Kimball dealt with Katrina issues for at least the next 5 years.

On January 1, 2009, she became the first female Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court. As Chief Justice, she strengthened her reputation as a brilliant and tireless advocate for justice. She became known for her work to preserve the judiciary as an equal and independent branch of government and collaborated with the legislature; Republicans and Democrats alike. Most of all, she made her mark by making strides in juvenile justice.

Chief Justice's dedication to juvenile justice developed from understanding

the effects that courts can have on children. Through her work in juvenile justice, she earned the respect of members of the national and local judicial communities. Judith S. Kaye, a retired Chief Justice of New York, said of the Chief Justice, ``She was outstanding in many ways, but for me most of all on the vexing issues concerning juvenile justice. The Chief Justice's ideas and initiatives drew my attention even before she became Chief Justice.'' Sue Bell Cobb, the Chief Justice of Alabama, also praised Chief Justice's work on juvenile justice. ``Children,'' she said, ``do not vote and do not have a voice in arenas in which public policy is made. In Louisiana, Chief Justice Kimball has been their voice.''

In Louisiana, former Louisiana Chief Justice Pascal Calogero said, ``Justice Kimball's contributions to the juvenile justice system, as well as the Judicial Leadership Institute, and other progressive judicial matters, were immeasurable. When she became Chief Justice, I knew that she would become one of the most active and respected chief justices in the history of the court.'' I could not agree more. Chief Justice Kimball has made her mark in history for many reasons, but especially for her work in juvenile justice.

The Chief Justice's accomplishments are of equally important significance for women pursuing legal careers in Louisiana. My sister Madeleine became a State court judge in 2001. When I asked Madeleine what Chief Justice Kimball's career has meant to her, she said, ``When Chief Justice Kimball took her seat among her six white male justices, it had a huge impact on me as a woman lawyer. The grace and dignity and excellence with which Chief Justice has held herself has shown us there are no limits to where we can go. It made such lofty goals not as scary to us anymore.'' Chief Justice Kimball always strives to reach her full potential and encourages others to do the same.

Among Chief Justice's endless list of accomplishments is her creation of the Judicial Leadership Institute in Louisiana. She recognized the important leadership role of a judge as both an employer and as a member of a community. She saw the value of judges of every level being in a room together and learning together. So she took the initiative to organize a training course which meets 7 days a year. This exemplifies so many of Chief Justice Kimball's great qualities--her devotion to the justice system and to the future of our state, her humility and her ability to be a strong leader while simultaneously being part of a team.

As the Chief Justice prepares to retire, I commend her for her years of service to our State and for her unwavering commitment to the Louisiana Constitution. Although she will step down at the end of January, the impact she made on the nearly 4.6 million citizens in our State will live on beyond her retirement, just as the people in that courtroom in New Roads, LA will never forget the day they saw Chief Justice Kimball make history.

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize a trailblazer and role model: Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Bernette J. Johnson. On February 1, 2013, Justice Johnson will become Louisiana's first African-American Chief Justice and only the second female jurist in Louisiana history to hold that office. It is fitting that the first woman elected to the Civil District Court of New Orleans--a woman who has devoted so much of her life to working as an advocate for social justice, civil rights and community organizing--would achieve this historic milestone.

Justice Johnson's commitment to civil rights began in the 1960s, when she began working as a community organizer with the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund. She worked with community groups in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Louisiana, disseminating information about recent school desegregation decisions and encouraging parents to take advantage of newly desegregated schools. Justice Johnson brings a unique perspective to the bench that is informed by principles of justice and equity.

An alumnus of Spelman College in Atlanta, Justice Johnson received her Juris Doctor Degree at the Law School at Louisiana State University, where her portrait now hangs in the Law Center's Hall of Fame. While in law school, she worked at the U.S. Department of Justice examining cases filed by the Department to implement the 1964 Civil Rights Act. These cases primarily concerned discrimination in public accommodations. Following law school, Justice Johnson became the managing attorney with the New Orleans Legal Assistance Corporation, where she provided legal services to over 3,000 clients in socio- economically deprived neighborhoods.

Justice Johnson worked in the Federal and State District Courts advancing the rights of the poor, the elderly, and the disenfranchised, and in the Juvenile Court advancing the rights of children. In 1981, she joined the City Attorney's staff, and later became a Deputy City Attorney for the City of New Orleans. There, she attained extensive trial experience in the Civil District Court and U.S. District Court defending police brutality claims and general tort claims filed against the City of New Orleans. Her experience fighting to protect the rights of the under privileged undoubtedly prepared her for service on the bench.

Justice Johnson began her judicial career in 1984 as the first woman elected to serve on the Civil District Court of New Orleans. There, she took the initiative to establish a system to refer custody, alimony, and child support issues to mediation conducted by certified social workers of the Children's Bureau and Family Services, prior to court appearances. She was elected to the Supreme Court in 1994 and re- elected in 2000. She serves on the Louisiana Supreme Court's Judicial Council, and has served on the Court's Legal Services Task Force, as well as the National Campaign on Best Practices in the area of Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts.

This is a truly a moment to be remembered, not just for the people of Louisiana, but for Americans all across the country. From advocating with the NAACP, to helping implement the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to becoming Louisiana's first African-American Supreme Court Justice, as she has now, Bernette Johnson's life and career is a testament to the spirit of the civil rights movement and the countless Americans who fought tirelessly to open the doors of equality. I congratulate Justice Bernette J. Johnson on a stellar legal and judicial career and thank her for her fighting spirit, commitment to equality, and deep respect for the dignity of all citizens. I have no doubt that she will continue to serve the people of Louisiana well.

Mr. President, I rise today to ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing the 90th birthday of the ``Queen of Creole Cuisine,'' Mrs. Leah Chase of New Orleans, LA.

Mrs. Chase was born in Madisonville, LA on January 6, 1923, and moved to New Orleans as a teenager to attend high school. It was in New Orleans that she developed her love for food and feeding others. Mrs. Chase married her husband, Edgar ``Dooky'' Chase Jr., in 1946, and they took over the family business--one of the best-known and most culturally significant restaurants in New Orleans, Dooky Chase's.

Mrs. Chase has cooked for jazz royalty, like Duke Ellington; for heads of state--among them Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama; and for the civil rights movement's greatest champions, like Justice Thurgood Marshall and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And though she is well-known for having catered to America's history makers, perhaps her greatest achievement is having quietly created a community where people are taken care of, no matter their situation in life. Mrs. Chase always takes care of those in need. She makes it a point to know not only the names of her patrons, but also their stories. And that feeling of a closely knit community where people look out for each other is why New Orleanians have been dining with Mrs. Chase for three generations. They are family to her, just like her four children, sixteen grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren.

Mrs. Chase has received too many awards to mention. Among them are the 1997 New Orleans Times-Picayune

Loving Cup Award, which annually recognizes citizens who have worked unselfishly for the community without expectation of public acclaim or material reward; the National Conference of Christians and Jews Weiss Award, which is presented annually to four outstanding community leaders who have been influential in promoting the advancement of social understanding and care; and the National Council of Negro Women Outstanding Woman Award. In addition to earning numerous awards, Mrs. Chase serves on the boards of many non-profit organizations, including the Arts Council of New Orleans, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Urban League.

Mrs. Chase has been and continues to be an inspiration to all who know her. It is with a heartfelt sincerity that I ask my colleagues to join me along with Mrs. Chase's family in recognizing the life and many accomplishments of this extraordinary woman.

Mr. President, I am proud to join my friend, the Senator from Missouri, on the floor to add voice to this travesty that has recently occurred.

The Senator from Missouri described the situation accurately; that a country that claims to be a powerful nation on the Earth has decided to take powerful action against the weakest, most vulnerable individuals on the Earth, and those are children without families.

It makes no sense whatsoever for the country of Russia to take the action they did because they are in a disagreement with us in America-- and maybe others around the world--about human rights violations regarding adults.

The Russian Government, in front of the whole world, has taken their anger and frustration out on their own children--their own children who are orphans, their own children who are sick, their own children who, in some cases, are disabled. It makes no sense in the world.

I was trying to think, I say to the Senator from Missouri, of what would ever possess the United States of America or any country to take their anger and their frustrations out on children. That is what the Duma did.

They are hurting their own children, and we would like to urge them strongly in this resolution--which I am going to submit for its immediate consideration on my behalf and Senator Blunt and Senator Inhofe. We would like to ask the Russian Government to please reconsider--there might be other actions they could take to make it clear they are unhappy with some things we have done, but damning their children should not be one of them, causing children to not have an opportunity for a family or an education or health care or enough food--and to please be considerate of their needs.

The 50 or so families who are in the very end of the process, we also want to ask the government to understand that just as birth parents anticipate the birth of their child, adoptive parents anticipate the coming of that union to their family. Most important, many of these children are not infants. Some of them are, but some of them are older children who know they are about to be adopted, who understand that a mother or a father has already agreed to take them to the United States. It is going to crush their hopes and their dreams and their spirit.

We are hoping the Russian Government will reconsider.

This resolution, I hope, will be joined by our colleagues in a strong vote of support. I know that with the Senator from Missouri, he and I will continue to work in every way we can to see if we can find a better resolution.

But there are a couple other things I wish to say about this quickly. I want everyone to be clear that in the United States of America--and I am very proud of our country in this regard--we adopt over 100,000 children a year. We have 350 million people-plus, but we adopt 100,000 children. Most of those children are American children adopted by American parents, children who have lost their parents, children who have been abandoned by their parents, children who have been grossly abandoned or neglected by their parents and the courts have stepped in and terminated those rights and we immediately

find relatives or people in the community to adopt because we believe, as Americans--and many people around the world--that children shouldn't raise themselves. Every child belongs in a family, in a permanent, loving, supportive, protective family, and it is our job as a government and our job as a faith-based community and our responsibility as a community to make sure there is no parentless child in the world.

So we work very hard, not just government to government but in the churches, in the faith-based communities, working with nonprofit organizations, to make the rules and regulations and systems strong to protect children and also to protect fragile families from disintegrating, reconnecting children with families, trying our very best to do that.

We want to work with Russia to strengthen their internal child protection system. We work on strengthening ours every day. It is not perfect, but it is one of the best in the world. We still make terrible mistakes, but we do want to continue to work to improve our child welfare system. But adoption, both domestic and international--kinship adoption included--is a very important tool of child protection. We want to do a better job in the United States. We want to continue to keep avenues of adoption open for children from Russia, from China, from Romania, et cetera.

Some people may be wondering: Senator, you are so bold speaking about this. Are children from America adopted overseas? The answer is yes-- not many, but under the international treaties of the rights of a child to a family, we need to be open to have American children--if they can't find an adoptive home here--to be able to go to other countries.

But the most important thing is to know that Americans step up every day to adopt American children, both infants, teenagers, and I have even known of adoptions of children who were 22 and 23 years of age. When are you ever too old to need a mother and a father?

But the action the Russian Duma has taken is a travesty, and it is incomprehensible that any government would take their anger out on another country against the children of their own country. We hope they will reconsider. We hope the people of Russia will rise and tell their government: Absolutely not. Take out your anger and frustration in another way, not on our own children, and allow these adoptions to be processed.