Floor Statements

Mr. President, the gulf coast has made good progress in rebuilding after last year's hurricanes. Our small businesses and entrepreneurs have led the way in this recovery. As all of my colleagues know small businesses are the engines of our economy driving innovation and growth.

Following Katrina and Rita, one problem for our business owners in the gulf was that their customer bases were dispersed around the country by the storms and were slow to return. Without this revenue from their customers, many businesses struggled to make ends meet and relied upon U.S. Small Business Administration, SBA, disaster loans, insurance payouts, and in some cases, State-administered bridge loan funding to keep going.

We also have businesses that export goods and services to foreign countries. The 2,000 exporters in Louisiana, in addition to the other help available, were also able to rely on their international partners to stay in business. Their international customers showed great faith and commitment to our exporters by placing new orders after the storms.

I am introducing the Small Business International Trade Enhancements Act of 2006 to give all small businesses the opportunity to expand their operations into international markets. I am pleased to have Senator Kerry, the ranking member of the Senate Small Business Committee, as well as Senators Pryor and Bayh, as cosponsors.

As I mentioned we have 2,000 exporters in Louisiana. However, there are many other businesses who are exporters, but they do not even realize it. They may have overseas Internet sales, or they focus operations on domestic sales, but have some international buyers as well. In fact, the Small Business Administration has stated that over 96 percent of all exporters of goods and services are small businesses.

Given the importance of these exporters to my State and to the rest of the gulf coast, I would like to improve their competitive edge in the international market and give them every resource they need to succeed. As they continue to recover, one of the main issues being faced by our small business is accessing capital. Our exporters are no different. They need help accessing export financing to cover export- related costs such as purchasing equipment, purchasing inventory, or financing production costs.

To help our small businesses access export financing, my legislation will create a gulf coast international finance specialist within SBA located in New Orleans to focus on the needs of businesses affected by Katrina and Rita. New Orleans had a finance specialist from 1998 until mid-2003, when that individual retired from the agency. SBA left the post vacant due to lack of funding. I believe it is important to locate this finance specialist in New Orleans because that is where the majority of Louisiana's exporters and export financing institutions are located. In New Orleans, this finance specialist also is in a prime location, within easy travel distance to the gulf coast sections of Mississippi and Alabama--where a majority of the exporters and export financing institutions in these States are located as well.

Fifteen SBA finance specialists operate out of 100 U.S. export assistance centers administered by the Department of Commerce around the country. That is a record staffing low for this program, down from a peak of 22 finance specialists in 2000. To ensure that all smaller exporters nationwide will continue to have access to export financing, this bill establishes a floor of 16 international finance specialists. I believe this will send a signal to our exporters that, despite current budget deficits, we are committed to our exporters and want to provide them with the necessary resources to compete internationally.

Mr. President, I realize that the need for export financing is not just limited to the gulf coast. There are small businesses nationwide that are looking to find markets overseas. One tool that they can use is the SBA's international trade loan, ITL, program. International trade loans can help exporters develop and expand overseas markets; upgrade equipment or facilities; and assist exporters that are being hurt by import competition. Exporters can borrow up to $2 million, with $1,750,000 guaranteed by SBA.

However, as currently structured these loans are not user-friendly to lenders or borrowers and, as a result, are underutilized. Let me explain what I mean. First, the $250,000 difference between the loan cap and the guarantee requires borrowers to take out a second SBA loan to take full advantage of the $2 million guarantee. ITLs can only be used to acquire fixed assets and not working capital, a common need for exporters. Furthermore, ITLs do not have the same collateral or refinancing requirements as SBA 7(a) loans. Because of these issues, lenders do not use these loans.

My legislation will reduce the paperwork by increasing the maximum loan guarantee to $2,750,000 and the loan cap to $3,670,000 to bring it more in line with the 7(a) program. This bill also creates a more flexible ITL by setting out that working capital is an eligible use for loan proceeds, in addition to making the ITL consistent with regular 7(a) loans by allowing the same collateral and refinancing terms as with 7(a).

The SBA international trade and export loans are valuable tools for exporters but they are useless if there is no one to assist borrowers with identifying which loans are right for them. Local lending institutions that specialize in export financing can help but at a cost over less than $2 million per year, the current group of finance specialists has obtained bank financing for more than $10 billion in U.S. exports since 1999. The $10 billion in export sales financed by these specialists helped to create over 140,000 new, high-paying U.S. jobs.

The Small Business International Trade Enhancements Act of 2006 is an

important first step, not just for exporters in the gulf coast, but also for small businesses nationwide who are looking to open markets overseas. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation since it will help our exporters in the gulf coast recover and also give small businesses nationwide more options when they are seeking export financing.

I thank the Chair and ask unanimous consent that a copy of the bill be printed in the Record, along with the accompanying material.

Mr. President, as we all know, there was a tremendous amount of criticism of the Federal Government's response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year. Things are better now and the region is slowly recovering. But we are in the second month of another hurricane season and we must be sure that if we have another disaster, the Federal Government's response will be better this time around. Disaster response agencies have to be better organized, more efficient, and more responsive in order to avoid the problems, the delays, mismanagement, and the seeming incompetence that occurred last year.

Today, I am introducing legislation to improve the disaster response of one agency that had a great deal of problems last year, the Small Business Administration, SBA. While it did improve during the course of the months after the storm, it became clear to me that SBA needs additional tools for future disasters. SBA approached Katrina and the massive floods after the storm, using the same tools that it uses for much smaller, much less damaging disasters. I do not blame all of the people who work at this agency for the problems we saw in the gulf. They found themselves in a system that was insufficient to address this disaster.

My legislation, the Small Business Disaster Recovery Assistance Improvements Act of 2006, offers new tools to

enhance SBA's disaster assistance programs. In every disaster, the SBA Disaster Loan program is a lifeline for businesses and homeowners who want to rebuild their lives after a catastrophe. When Katrina hit, our businesses and homeowners had to wait months for loan approvals. I do not know how many businesses we lost because help did not come in time. Because of the scale of this disaster, what these businesses needed was immediate, short-term bridge loans to hold them over until SBA was ready to process the tens of thousands of loan applications it received.

That is why this legislation provides the SBA Administrator with the ability to make emergency bridge loans of up to $150,000 to affected small businesses in a declared disaster area. These bridge loans will allow businesses to make payroll, begin making repairs, and address other immediate needs while they are awaiting insurance payouts or regular SBA disaster loans. However, I realize that every disaster is different and could range from a disaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina or 9/11, to an ice storm or drought. My legislation gives the SBA additional options and flexibility in the kinds of relief they can offer a community. When a tornado destroys 20 businesses in a small town in the Midwest, SBA can get the regular disaster program up and running fairly quickly. You may not need bridge loans in this instance. But if you know that SBA's resources would be overwhelmed by a storm-- just as they were initially with Katrina--bridge loans would be very helpful.

My legislation also would expedite disaster loans for those businesses in a disaster area that have a good, solid track record with the SBA or can provide vital recovery efforts. We had many businesses in the gulf coast that had paid off previous SBA loans, were major sources of employment in their communities, but had to wait months for decisions on their disaster loan applications. I do not want to get rid of the SBA's current practice of reviewing applications on a first- come-first-served basis, but there should be some mechanism in place for major disasters to get expedited loans out the door to specific businesses that has a positive record with SBA or those that could serve a vital role in the recovery efforts. Expedited loans would jump- start impacted economies, get vital capital out to businesses, and retain essential jobs following future disasters.

We had a lot of small business owners in the gulf coast who did not qualify for SBA disaster loans, or may not have had enough insurance to cover their losses. These people usually have to expend their personal finances or seek out small grants from non-profits to keep going. My legislation authorizes a small business disaster grant program to provide small grants of up to $25,000 to businesses that are not able to get access to get other assistance. These grants will only go to business owners that certify their intent to reopen in the disaster area and pursue technical assistance to continue their operations.

Following Katrina, it is clear that disaster loan amounts need to be updated to reflect current business needs and the average cost of housing today. The bill raises the cap on SBA disaster loans for businesses from $1.5 million to $2.25 million; the cap on SBA personal property loans from $40,000 to $50,000; and the cap on real property homeowner loans from $200,000 to $250,000.

This bill also makes an important modification to the collateral requirements for disaster loans. The SBA cannot disburse more than $10,000 for an approved loan without showing collateral. This is to limit the loss to the SBA in the event that a loan defaults. However, this disbursement amount has not been increased since 1998 and these days, $10,000 is not enough to get a business up and running.

I was surprised to learn that the SBA did not have a full-time disaster planner on board before Katrina, nor did it have a comprehensive disaster response plan in place. While SBA is not a first-responder disaster agency like FEMA, they do hit the ground within days of a disaster strike. As the only Federal nonagricultural disaster lender, SBA should have an analytical, proactive plan in place to respond to disasters.

I pushed to get language in the recent hurricane supplemental appropriations bill to require SBA to develop a disaster plan and report to Congress on its contents by July 15, 2006. I look forward to this report. But writing a plan and making it work are two different things. SBA needs a full-time staff in place to ensure that this plan is implemented properly. My legislation directs the SBA to hire a full- time disaster planner to maintain this disaster response plan and to assist the SBA with its overall disaster preparedness, including coordination with other disaster response agencies like FEMA.

As we reflect next month on the 1-year anniversary of the worst natural disaster to hit our nation, now is the time for action--not words or empty promises. I want to be able to go back to my constituents and reassure them that if, God forbid, another natural disaster should hit my state or another part of the country, that the Small Business Administration is better prepared and more responsive to the needs of those impacted.

The Small Business Disaster Recovery Assistance Improvements Act will provide essential tools to make the SBA more proactive, flexible, and most important, more efficient during future disasters. In the coming weeks, I look forward to working with both Chairwoman Snowe and Ranking Member Kerry on the Senate Small Business Committee to ensure that the SBA has everything it needs to meet these goals.

Mr. President, I am pleased to be joined on this legislation by the ranking member of the Small Business Committee, Senator Kerry, as well as my colleagues from the Small Business Committee, Senators Pryor and Bayh. We urge our other colleagues to support this important legislation.

I thank the Chair and ask unanimous consent that a copy of the bill be printed in the Record, along with the accompanying materials.

Mr. President, this is a bill that will reduce the estate tax and reform a system that needs to be reformed. It is an issue that many of us have been working on for several--not only several months but for several years. Leaders on both sides of the aisle and Members on both sides of the aisle have been trying to come up with a compromise position that would be respectful of the fiscal situation of our country and also mindful that this tax in its current form, at least the rates and the way it is applied in its current form, can simply not be sustained. It makes no sense for this tax to be in place 1 year and go completely away the next year and then come back in the next year at a completely different rate.

We have been trying to make this much more simple for taxpayers who have to comply with it and much more fair so that it is not a discouragement for people who want to start businesses at later years. We want to try to be fair to the Federal Treasury and to the many demands.

At one point, I supported the total repeal of this tax. That one time was when we were running a surplus and before we were engaged in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The war in Iraq is costing this country approximately $4 billion to $6 billion a month. It has been going on for 3 years. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be an end in sight because things are not going as well as many of us had hoped. We must continue to make a priority of this Nation supporting our men and women in uniform--whether they are here at home or in Iraq in the frontline or in Afghanistan in the frontline or other frontlines around the world. So we simply cannot afford to repeal this tax. It takes too much money out of the Treasury at a time when we need it to support our troops. Most Americans, regardless of how they feel about the war, realize we need the money to support our troops and keep them safe and help bring them home as soon as possible.

I offer this bill in the spirit of compromise. Hopefully, it will give some guidance to those who may be looking for something they can support, that costs significantly less than what Chairman Thomas has proposed, what Senator Kyl has proposed, and what others have proposed, yet gives that assurance to businesses that they will not have to pay a fluctuating rate.

The most important thing I think my bill does is it completely eliminates the estate tax for 99.9 percent of the people in Louisiana and a great percentage of people throughout the country. If you are an estate of less than $10 million, you will pay no tax. If you are a single person with $5 million or an estate worth $10 million, you have to pay income tax, you will pay capital gains tax, you will pay payroll tax, you will pay a lot of other taxes that come with the rights and privileges of being an American citizen, but you will not pay an estate tax. Only those estates over $10 million will pay the tax. And those over $100 million--which I would call superstates--would pay a little more than those that are in the middle.

As a Democrat and as a Senator, I believe in a free enterprise system where people can make money and benefit from their hard work. We need to balance between the individual's right to keep as much money as they can make and the Nation's needs to conduct wars, to protect our borders, to protect our coasts, to build our highway system--which is 50 years old today and certainly did not get built on a wish and a prayer. It got built with good design, good political will, and a lot of money that went into building that highway system that we can be proud of. It needs to be improved.

So for those who say every American should be able to keep all the money they make, I don't know who would keep the public sector that does so much good--from the men and women in uniform, to building the highways, to keeping our air clean and water clean, and other things that we depend on Government to help operate and collect in a sensible way.

I offer this in a spirit of compromise. It is something I certainly can support, and I look forward to working with my colleagues as we move through this recess to come to terms with something that is fiscally responsible and also cognizant of trying to get this tax leveled so people can plan on what they are going to have to pay and it will not become a burden on anyone and so everyone can plan, even those with a great deal of money.

Mr. President, this is a bill that will reduce the estate tax and reform a system that needs to be reformed. It is an issue that many of us have been working on for several--not only several months but for several years. Leaders on both sides of the aisle and Members on both sides of the aisle have been trying to come up with a compromise position that would be respectful of the fiscal situation of our country and also mindful that this tax in its current form, at least the rates and the way it is applied in its current form, can simply not be sustained. It makes no sense for this tax to be in place 1 year and go completely away the next year and then come back in the next year at a completely different rate.

We have been trying to make this much more simple for taxpayers who have to comply with it and much more fair so that it is not a discouragement for people who want to start businesses at later years. We want to try to be fair to the Federal Treasury and to the many demands.

At one point, I supported the total repeal of this tax. That one time was when we were running a surplus and before we were engaged in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The war in Iraq is costing this country approximately $4 billion to $6 billion a month. It has been going on for 3 years. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be an end in sight because things are not going as well as many of us had hoped. We must continue to make a priority of this Nation supporting our men and women in uniform--whether they are here at home or in Iraq in the frontline or in Afghanistan in the frontline or other frontlines around the world. So we simply cannot afford to repeal this tax. It takes too much money out of the Treasury at a time when we need it to support our troops. Most Americans, regardless of how they feel about the war, realize we need the money to support our troops and keep them safe and help bring them home as soon as possible.

I offer this bill in the spirit of compromise. Hopefully, it will give some guidance to those who may be looking for something they can support, that costs significantly less than what Chairman Thomas has proposed, what Senator Kyl has proposed, and what others have proposed, yet gives that assurance to businesses that they will not have to pay a fluctuating rate.

The most important thing I think my bill does is it completely eliminates the estate tax for 99.9 percent of the people in Louisiana and a great percentage of people throughout the country. If you are an estate of less than $10 million, you will pay no tax. If you are a single person with $5 million or an estate worth $10 million, you have to pay income tax, you will pay capital gains tax, you will pay payroll tax, you will pay a lot of other taxes that come with the rights and privileges of being an American citizen, but you will not pay an estate tax. Only those estates over $10 million will pay the tax. And those over $100 million--which I would call superstates--would pay a little more than those that are in the middle.

As a Democrat and as a Senator, I believe in a free enterprise system where people can make money and benefit from their hard work. We need to balance between the individual's right to keep as much money as they can make and the Nation's needs to conduct wars, to protect our borders, to protect our coasts, to build our highway system--which is 50 years old today and certainly did not get built on a wish and a prayer. It got built with good design, good political will, and a lot of money that went into building that highway system that we can be proud of. It needs to be improved.

So for those who say every American should be able to keep all the money they make, I don't know who would keep the public sector that does so much good--from the men and women in uniform, to building the highways, to keeping our air clean and water clean, and other things that we depend on Government to help operate and collect in a sensible way.

I offer this in a spirit of compromise. It is something I certainly can support, and I look forward to working with my colleagues as we move through this recess to come to terms with something that is fiscally responsible and also cognizant of trying to get this tax leveled so people can plan on what they are going to have to pay and it will not become a burden on anyone and so everyone can plan, even those with a great deal of money.

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

I thank the Chair.

(The remarks of Ms. Landrieu pertaining to the introduction of S. 3626 are located in today's Record under ``Statements of Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I welcome the confirmation of Steven Preston to be U.S. Small Business Administration, BSA Administrator. I had the pleasure of meeting with Mr. Preston a few weeks ago, and I believe that he has the management experience to take on the many challenges facing the Small Business Administration. More importantly, I was impressed with his passion to serve and to take on this particularly challenging position.

For too long this agency, which serves the backbone of our Nation's economy, has been a second-class citizen in this administration. The SBA enjoyed Cabinet-level status under President Clinton but has since been downgraded to a second-tier agency. The SBA's budget has been cut by nearly 40 percent since 2001--more than any other Federal agency. This sends the wrong signal to small businesses, especially our small businesses down in the gulf coast. It tells them that they are not worth the investment, that small businesses are not a national priority.

We need a SBA Administrator who is a ``work horse'' not a ``show horse.'' Washington has plenty of show horses, but they should not be running Federal agencies. We have seen that in the gulf, and we don't want to see it again. I am willing to work with Mr. Preston and with my colleagues on the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship to help the SBA be more effective and responsive in good times and bad.

One of the first challenges Mr. Preston will face is to ensure that the SBA is ready for this year's hurricane season. Experts forecast that this will be a very active season, and the SBA has to be ready. Last year, we had the sense that the agency was acting by the seat of their pants. Under the circumstances, that is not so surprising. The country had never seen anything like Katrina before. But now Mr. Preston and the SBA have the opportunity to take the lessons of last year to better prepared for this year.

The emergency supplemental appropriations bill we most recently passed contains language that I sponsored to require SBA to submit a comprehensive disaster preparedness plan to Congress by July 15. SBA did not have one in place for Katrina, so my colleagues and I want to ensure that they are more prepared for hurricane season this year and future disasters as well. I look forward to receiving this report next week.

I mentioned that Mr. Preston's management experience will serve him well as he works to make the SBA a more efficient and responsive agency. Congress also needs to give SBA the tools to allow it to improve. After Katrina, small businesses in Louisiana had nothing but complaints about SBA's service in the Disaster Loan Program.

They needed access to immediate capital to pay employees, restore inventory, and make quick repairs, but SBA said it was not in the business of short-term recovery. That is why the upcoming SBJ reauthorization is going to be so important. This will be an opportunity to not only reauthorize funding for the SBA capital and technical assistance programs but also to make the SBA more responsive and efficient for future disasters.

I intend to introduce legislation that I would like to see included in the reauthorization bill to give the SBA more tools for handling future disasters. We need to give SBA expedited disaster loan authority for businesses in good standing with the SBA. We need to authorize short-term bridge loan and grant authority, so that in a major disaster, businesses can get help earlier, rather than later. SBA needs a full-time planning staff, and we must encourage the agency to better utilize its district offices. In the aftermath of Katrina, we need a strong SBA more than ever. In taking the helm, Mr. Preston will be a pivotal figure in the recovery of the gulf coast as well as to the economic growth of small businesses nationwide.

As Administrator, he will be inheriting an agency that by many accounts has an unfortunate legacy of mismanagement, inefficiency, poor employee morale, and soured relations with Congress. The management challenges are huge, but the need to do it right is greater. I believe that in Steven Preston, we have a nominee who can use his corporate management and finance experience to fix SBA. I invite him to not be afraid to take on the old ways of doing things at SBA. If he runs into roadblocks, come talk to us on the Senate Small Business Committee. If he needs a legislative change to move this agency forward, come to us. We want this agency to work. Our small businesses need this agency to work and to work well.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from California for her remarks and her passion and her focus on the issue of stem cell research. One day when millions of Americans have been cured of diseases that afflict us today because the research is just not there, we can thank Senator Feinstein for staying on point, every month, every year--staying on point on stem cell research. It is something the vast number of Americans support. They understand the importance of pressing forward on this science to find real cures for real people, for real families. That will not only relieve the pain and suffering that comes with disease but also promote the general economic well-being of a nation based on a free enterprise system that works much better when people are healthy than it does when they are sick.

I stand in awe of Senator Feinstein's focus on this issue, and I support her wholeheartedly.

It is my opportunity to speak about one of the very important aspects on this checklist. We talked about safeguarding America's pensions, and we have talked about good jobs in America. Senator Cantwell talked about college affordability for all Americans, about being the first person from her family to graduate from college, and as she has shared with us, going on to create a multimillion-dollar software business that, of course, helped her personally and her immediate family. But think of all the other people it helped because she received a great education from our system--protecting America and our military families and making America energy independent, as Senator Clinton was so clearly stating, and small business health care as Senator Lincoln spoke to this morning.

I am going to focus my attention on preparing for future disasters. It is, unfortunately, something that we in Louisiana have become somewhat experts on lately, having lived through and still trying to live and survive after the greatest natural disaster to hit our country in some time.

I begin by saying that if there was ever a wonder why our country was created, you can find the answer in the Preamble of the Constitution, one of the greatest documents ever written. It talks about providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. Our Federal Government, which was established over 220 years ago, has established institutions, large and small, to meet the promise of the Preamble of the Constitution.

We established the Department of Defense to support and provide for the common defense. It was called the War Department. Now it is called the Department of Defense. We established the Department of Health, Education, and Labor to promote the general welfare.

Thirty years ago we established the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help keep Americans secure in the blessings of their liberty in the middle of natural disasters.

On August 29, when Katrina hit land, a category 5 storm to hit the gulf coast and to hit the southeastern part of Louisiana and the southwestern part of Mississippi, and 3 weeks later when Hurricane Rita barreled into the southwestern part of our State, the Federal Government failed the people of the gulf coast.

Amazingly, nearly 1 year after this unprecedented failure, we have done

little, if anything, to ensure that this will not happen again.

Studies have been completed. Reports have been drafted. Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins have been exemplary in their work in a bipartisan fashion in the Senate--1,000 hours of hearings, dozens of field hearings--to come up with comprehensive legislation. However, somewhere between the Republican leadership in the White House and the Republican leadership in Congress we have failed to come up with a single recommendation or a piece of legislation to come before this Congress to make sure that some of these recommendations are put into place.

The White House has not asked for a single law to be changed based on their own report of 125 recommendations. Contrast that with what happened after September 11. This Government was literally turned upside down and inside out. Laws--dozens of laws, maybe even hundreds of laws--were changed so that we could try to get to core answers to 9/ 11. Yet after the greatest natural disaster in American history, with the failure of the Federal Emergency Management, a failure that will be recorded in history for generations, not one law has been permanently changed. And it is almost 11 months after that storm.

Billions of dollars have been thrown at the problem. And at the request of myself and a few Members of our delegation, we have managed to move a few billion of those dollars out from this morass of a Federal agency that doesn't work to try to get money directly to parishes, counties, to economic development departments for the recovery and rebuilding.

I raise this point on this checklist not just for Louisiana which we are going to rebuild regardless of the mess we find ourselves in, but we want to raise this issue--I want to raise this issue--in hopes that it can prevent this kind of recovery taking place in Seattle, in the event of a tsunami, or in California in the event of an earthquake, or in Tennessee which also sits on a fault line of a geological structure.

I raise this point to honor the 1,836 victims of Katrina and the 120 victims of Rita. Surely there is enough sacrifice for people to make before their Government, led by a Republican Congress, takes the steps to make sure it will never happen again. I know that no Congress run by Democrats or Republicans can prevent a natural disaster. We understand that. We are going to have earthquakes, hurricanes, and we are going to have volcanic eruptions. While we can't prevent that, we can most certainly improve the response from the Federal level so that people do not have to suffer through the rebuilding that is going on now in Louisiana.

The first thing that must be done, which is part of our checklist, is to give the Director of FEMA the authority and the access he had under the stewardship of its most successful Director, James Lee Witt, under the previous administration. At that time, it was a Cabinet level position that had the trust and access of the President and the full command of Federal resources during such disasters.

Regrettably, we have all watched in horror on the television screen, and I have watched personally upfront as a witness of the failings of FEMA on the ground, constrained by the priorities of the Homeland Security Director, which is different than what the needs of this great city and region are. And after reading the exchanges between Director Brown and Secretary Chertoff, it most certainly doesn't seem to be their focus on emergency response in homeland security. FEMA needs to stand and win the internal battles to get priorities on the budget. Moving boxes around in the Federal Government organizational charts should not be our focus. And that is not the solution. The issue is that FEMA must be a priority for the highest levels of leadership. It must be able to command the attention of the Federal Government and the many resources and assets that this Federal Government has to help rebuild and reestablish confidence in any community that would find itself virtually destroyed, as in the case of St. Bernard Parish, a small parish that doesn't get the attention of the national media. But 60,000 people live there, and 95 percent of their homes were destroyed with 15 to 20 feet of water.

Senator Bayh and I had the pleasure of visiting down in that great parish with the great spirit, and just last Friday we walked into an unbelievable sight. A small trailer was sitting in the middle of complete ruin, with brave teachers and administrators inside this trailer trying to conduct what I guess is a summer school for children. We walked into this classroom with the lights low at naptime, with music, where 20 little children were sleeping. When we walked out of that trailer, all you could see was destruction as if you were in a war zone. Yet the happiness on the faces of the children and the spirit of those teachers was really a testament to the resilience of people despite the fact that their Government is failing them. They are not going to fail themselves or their children. But we can do better.

On 9/11, when the terrorists attacked New York, everyone said that one of the major failings was the failure of the communications system. We lost 335 firefighters--not because they lacked bravery, not because they lacked leadership, not because they lacked the armor or the covering to protect them from the fire as they ran to the building when everyone was running away--we lost many of them because their radios didn't work. We couldn't find a few hundred dollars to buy a radio for firemen running into a skyscraper that was falling down. We all know what we did wrong.

Today, we still don't have a system of communication that can operate when the cell phone towers go down, whether they are burned down, blown out, or flooded out. It doesn't exist. Five years is a long time.

I will tell you what we have done in 5 years. We built a continental railroad in 5 years. From the time of Pearl Harbor to Victory Day was 5 years. From the time the Apollo drawings were on paper until we hit the Moon was 5 years. But it is 5 years since 9/11.

When the people of the gulf coast had two major hurricanes barrel down on them and they went to use a cell phone, a land line, or a computer, the communications system was down. We were blamed for not having an evacuation plan. Let me say for the last time that the best evacuation plan doesn't work if you can't communicate it to your neighbors, let alone to the doctor in the emergency room or the ambulance driver or the bus driver trying to run the bus or the Superdome operator trying to keep thousands of people safe and fed and cared for.

I know our time is up in just about 2 minutes. I have gone a little over my time. I want to say in closing that there is a lot the Republican Congress could do to keep us on point, to keep us focused on the things that matter to the American people dealing with natural disasters, helping them to rebuild their shattered lives, their homes, their schools, their churches, and their businesses. When these storms and floods come through is one thing. It is very important to the people of this country.

I wish, as a Democratic Senator from Louisiana, that we would spend a little bit more time making sure the communications system works, that FEMA works, and that all the money the taxpayers are spending is being spent well and not wasted. That is sort of the third disaster--not the disaster itself but the disaster of wasting money when people are so desperate for the resources they need to rebuild.

Thank you, Mr. President, for presiding this morning. It is probably not the easiest thing to listen to. But these are some shortcomings that we believe we need to step up to and address for our country and put before the American people, the practical solutions.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to a man who may be the most important friend that the people of West Virginia have ever sent to Washington or ever will send to Washington. He is the senior Senator of West Virginia, and today he becomes America's senior Senator.

The Senate is housed in this beautiful Chamber of marble columns and intricate architecture. But the Senate is not a building; it is not a seal or a symbol or an idea. The Senate is a group of 100 men and women who are chosen by the people to craft the laws that define and govern the American People.

While the Senate is not a building, it does have individuals who serve as pillars upon which the rest of us place our

trust and reliance. Today, we salute one such pillar. The senior Senator from West Virginia enters the record books as the longest serving Senator.

Note, I say that he enters the record books, not the history books. I say that because I expect the senior Senator from West Virginia to be making history on this floor for many years to come.

In an earlier time, we would have called Robert Byrd a renaissance man in the mold of such American luminaries as Jefferson or Franklin. Consider that he is a poet, an accomplished musician, an author, the foremost historian of this Chamber, a parliamentary expert, an intensely devout Christian, an unrivaled legislator, a scholar of our Constitution, and earned a J.D. while a Member of this Chamber.

Yet all of these accomplishments as an individual are dwarfed by what he has done and will continue to do for the people of West Virginia. He has brought mew industries like biotechnology, biometrics and other high tech, high skilled work to West Virginia. He has fought for dams, roadways, hospitals, and highways. It is hard to imagine that one man might have such a transformative impact on a State. Yet friend and foe alike would concede this point to Robert Byrd.

I say today that Senator Byrd becomes America's senior Senator. In many ways, he always has been. No man or woman more rigorously defends the role of this Chamber in our governmental structure, and no man or woman fights more ardently to preserve that beautiful document he carries in his breast pocket--the U.S. Constitution. One of the first things I did when I was sworn in as a Member of this body was to take the whole Landrieu family to see Senator Byrd and have him give us a talk on the Constitution and the role of the Senate.

For the last 6 years, it has been my pleasure to serve under Senator Byrd's leadership on the Senate Appropriations Committee. In that capacity, he has proven repeatedly that he is a friend to the people of Louisiana and understands the tragedy that has befallen them. I thank him for that help and friendship.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that today is a bittersweet anniversary, for it is also Erma's birthday. A woman whose life, and now memory, Senator Byrd so obviously cherished.

So, Mr. President, I thank America's senior Senator for his service to this country and for his friendship.

I conclude my remarks, as he so often does, with a verse of poetry-- one of the Senator's favorites--the final verse of ``The Building of the Ship'' by Longfellow:

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!

Sail on, O UNION, strong and great!

Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

We know what Master laid thy keel,

What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,

Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,

What anvils rang, what hammers beat,

In what a forge and what a heat

Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!

Fear not each sudden sound and shock,

'Tis of the wave and not the rock;

'Tis but the flapping of the sail,

And not a rent made by the gale!

In spite of rock and tempest's roar,

In spite of false lights on the shore,

Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,

Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,

Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,

Are all with thee,--are all with thee!

Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak about the supplemental.

As I begin, I would like to underscore some of the points the Senator from Illinois just made about the disturbing deficiencies in this particular supplemental relative to the underfunding of many ongoing critical issues that he so eloquently outlined. But I would like to say that there are some extraordinarily helpful items in this supplemental, which is why I am going to support it, why I was pleased to be a part of crafting the supplemental through the appropriations process as a member of that committee, and why I would like to say a particular thank you to the senior Senator from West Virginia, Robert Byrd, and--I see the chairman of the Appropriations Committee on the floor--to thank the Senator from Mississippi, Mr. Cochran, for his work in fashioning through this Senate a bill that will bring so much help and urgently needed support to the gulf coast.

It is not too soon for us to do this, considering hurricane season started last week and there is a tropical storm out in the gulf as we speak here on the floor. Throughout all the gulf coast, from Pascagoula all the way to Beaumont and in parts of Florida as well, of course, people are sitting on pins and needles, hoping and praying that this season that we are entering is not as catastrophic as the one we just left and looking to this Congress, looking to this Senate, looking to the House, looking to our Governors of our States, to give them support and encouragement. That is what this supplemental bill will do.

Within this supplemental bill, despite the real shortcomings that Senator Durbin has outlined and the real dilemma for those who want to support the troops in Iraq and support real disaster funds, there is an unfortunate choice of having to cut some overall funding that is critical to the country. But, from our perspective, representing the State of Louisiana--and trying to speak as well as I can for the whole gulf coast--we have to get this supplemental passed today.

The leadership of the Appropriations Committee has tried, on the Senate side, to push a robust, strong supplemental bill through to help the people of the gulf coast.

I would like to spend just a moment talking about some of the things that we were successful with in this bill, starting with $3.7 billion to repair and armor hurricane-protected levees throughout Louisiana, in the southeastern part of our State as well as other parts of our State.

The reason this is so critical is, as I have said many times, it wasn't the hurricanes which necessarily did us in in Louisiana, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but what really put us at risk and what really caused substantial damage and loss of life--1,300 people died in the last hurricane season in the United States, a record we could not even believe we would hit or a number we would hit, not in the year 2006, not with the warning we have, not with all the sophisticated technology we have today, but 1,300 people lost their lives in large measure because the Federal levee system collapsed. It broke in multiple places because of underfunding over the years and because of lack of integrity in the design. That report was released only 12 weeks ago. Repairing those levees, armoring them, and building them better, we are not able to do on a wish and a prayer. We need to do that with real money, and the real money is in this bill.

I thank Senator Cochran and the administration for stepping up and realizing that their original request was

billions of dollars short. Without this extra money, the people of south Louisiana and in large measure the gulf coast of Mississippi-- which, by the way, is protected by the levee systems and the coastal system of Louisiana--would be very vulnerable. We have added almost $2 billion through the process from the original $1.9 billion. Without the strong support of Senator Byrd and Democratic Members as well as the leadership of Senator Cochran, this would not have been possible.

I also wish to say that a very strong part of this bill we will find in the $5.2 billion for community development block grants. The original request by the administration was only about $4 billion. While we were extremely happy for that because it was directed to Louisiana, we were able to put an additional $1 billion for community development block grants to make sure that Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, to some degree Florida, and, of course, Louisiana get the help they need, not through FEMA, which even on its best day is not working very well, not through other agencies that have not been designed or are not functioning well, but directly to our Governors and to our legislators and local officials who can put this community development block grant to good use--rebuilding 200,000 homes in Louisiana that were destroyed, 10 times more than Hurricane Andrew, which was the most expensive storm to hit Florida or the United States prior to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. We are very grateful and very hopeful that this community development block grant funding can go to rebuilding, to setting up a new approach to rebuilding houses.

The saddest thing was that many people didn't have insurance because they weren't in the flood plain. They didn't have insurance because they had already paid for their homes. Their homes were paid in full, on high ground, not in a flood plain. Then the levees broke, and middle-income families, wealthy families, and poor families lost their largest asset--their security for their retirement, their emotional security, having worked a whole lifetime to build assets of a home, washed away. For some parents and for some grandparents, this was the way they were going to send their children or grandchildren to college. Gone. Without this community development block grant, they have no hope of restoring their asset or rebuilding their equity--no hope.

Mississippi has developed a plan that is slightly different from Louisiana's plan. I am not sure either one of them is perfect, but it is the plan they came up with. Our job is to get them the money and urge them to do the very best they can with giving people a start.

This is just a picture of one house. I am sure Senator Cochran and Senator Lott have others. I will literally show you pictures of homes of all different shapes and sizes. Over 275,000 of them look like this. Again, it wasn't just a regular hurricane, which we are used to in the gulf. When the levees broke and a tsunami, a wave of 20 feet of water, poured into the city of New Orleans out of Lake Pontchartrain, this is what was left. That is what people came back to.

People ask: Senator, why isn't everybody scurrying around rebuilding? Well, if this were my house--and my brothers' and sisters' houses look like this; four of them lost their houses; this is what they look like. When they showed up, I, frankly, know how they felt. They do not know where to begin. Even if they can clean up their house, every house to the left and every house to the right and every house as far as the eye can see looks like this, and they are not sure they want to be the only one back in the neighborhood, with no water, no lights, et cetera.

This is a problem of huge magnitude for the gulf coast. As I said, this is not a place which is inconsequential to the Nation; this place is the heart of America's energy coast. One of the reasons the price of oil is so high is because these hurricanes shut down the oil and gas industry for the most part in the gulf when they hit. Anytime a hurricane comes to the gulf, we have to relocate within 24 hours about 6,000 to 7,000 oil workers who make their living on these platforms out in the gulf. These are cities out in the gulf. Every time those waves kick up, to great credit to the industry, I am not sure we had one loss of life. I could be wrong, but I am not sure. I am almost sure there was no loss of life to the workers here because we got them off of those rigs, tied those rigs down, and buckled down for those storms. When the storms pass, we all go back out and we set this up again.

Not only were these storms category 4 and 5 and we are still only 75 percent up, but the communities that serve them--like the community of St. Bernard where a lot of people live who work in these oilfields lost 59 percent of their houses, and 90 percent of all their businesses were destroyed because the levees broke. We are asking these people who live in those houses which you just saw to go out to these rigs every day to work to turn the lights on in this Chamber. They do a real good job of that. I am proud of the work they do. But this supplemental will help them rebuild their homes, rebuild their schools, and rebuild their businesses. The least we can do is pass it without any more time lapse to give them a chance to get back.

I hope members of the Appropriations Committee and the authorizing committees will really grab this opportunity; that is, we fought to get some additional money in this bill, and we ended up with $400 million for some alternative housing.

Let me say as a Senator from Louisiana that I have been through these storms. Can we please move past the plan to put people in trailers? It is costing the Federal Government $70,000 to put people in a trailer. We could practically build a house for $70,000 and let people live there temporarily until they can get back into their real houses. It is an extraordinary waste of money. We are wasting it at rates that stagger people. We have to think about a new way of not putting everybody in trailers.

Another problem with putting people in trailers is when the next hurricane season comes along, their trailers could literally blow away if they are not tacked down the way they should be, or secured. And FEMA has just let all the people living in trailers know that they are not to take the trailers with them. Even though they are travel trailers, they cannot take them with them if they have to evacuate because they might steal them.

Here we are going to have thousands of people who are living in trailers which cost $70,000 each to hook up--and contractors made a lot of money off of this system--and the people who have to live in them only get a little bit of space to live. Some are living in them with three or four children, which makes for an exciting opportunity for families. These trailers cannot be moved when the hurricane comes. I hope the winds don't get up to 150 miles an hour because we will have a lot of trailers flying around. I don't know what is going to happen there.

I am so happy that we could fight for this $400 million. That sounds like a lot of money, but considering we are spending billions of dollars on trailers, to think maybe we could do this a better way next time--that is in this bill.

Another part in this bill which we fought hard to keep--and we got knocked down quite a bit, but we managed to save a piece of it--was for the colleges and universities. Mississippi has two colleges that were very severely damaged. I believe that is correct. I could be wrong. If I am, I will correct the record. But Louisiana has 12 major universities--Tulane, Loyola, the University of New Orleans, Xavier, Dillard, McNeese on the western side--and 45,000 people are employed by these universities, and there are 40,000 students at these universities. Dillard University, one of the historic Black colleges in our country, a private college with an excellent reputation, small--the kids are still at the Hilton Hotel taking classes and eating their meals in the dining room of the Hilton Hotel because their whole campus was destroyed. Their insurance is slow. They are having a hard time getting back. But it is a beautiful, historic campus.

We have $50 million in this bill to try to give out grants. They have borrowed as much as they can. Their boards of directors are fighting to keep these universities up and running. Besides the great history of these universities, they are the economic engine that is going to pull the gulf coast up from its knees and pull it back. If not our universities, who is going to do the job?

Instead of having our universities lay off people, our universities should be hiring people. These are people getting good jobs that pay $50,000 and $100,000. We need our researchers, teachers, and our professors leading the way, and we need our students leading the way to rebuild this great part of America. We have some money in this bill for that. I am proud that we got bipartisan support for that effort on the Senate side.

Finally, I wish to mention two other things. In the city of New Orleans, where the water flooded 80 percent of the east bank of the city, one of the facilities we lost was the veterans hospital. We have over 400,000 veterans in Louisiana. I think we probably have about 300,000 in Mississippi. Between the gulf coast of Mississippi and New Orleans, we had a very good system of health care for our veterans, who really deserve our very best. All Americans deserve good health care, but for men and women who spent their early years, their teenage years, in their early twenties in foxholes, the least we can do for them for defending this country and holding up the flag--today is Flag Day--is make sure when their hospitals and clinics are destroyed that we not only build them back but we build them back better and stronger. If they were too close to the coast, we will move it back.

This hospital was safely in downtown New Orleans, not anywhere near a coast, not anywhere near a lake, not anywhere near the ocean. Because the levees broke, that building was flooded, and now we have veterans without a hospital.

The money for that hospital is in this bill. My colleagues have committed to pass the prerequisite authorization we need to get that done. We will build up in the next couple of months a better health care system for veterans in the gulf coast, and do it smartly with taxpayer money because we are partnering with LSU and perhaps even with Tulane to do a very interesting build of this new hospital that serves veterans and the public alike as we rise up with a better health care system for the gulf coast.

Finally, small businesses. I don't know what makes me sadder. I can't even decide what is the saddest thing about this because it is all so sad. We lost 20,000 businesses. Just as people lost their home, their greatest asset, people struggle their whole life to build a business. It might not have been a huge business, but it was their business. It might not have been a $50 million business, but it employed three or four people. It made a living for the business owner, and it contributed to the society and to the strength of the community. Many of those businesses are gone.

We have been very slow to recognize the extraordinary magnitude of this disaster, saying to our businesses: Just go to the Small Business Administration and get a loan.

I will spend 1 minute on this. Senator Kerry and I sat through 3 hours of testimony, 7 hours on the ground at a small business tour in New Orleans. I want to tell you what people said: Senator, this makes no sense to me. I got my loan. I asked for a $400,000 loan. I applied for it. After 4 or 5 months, I finally got approved. But I don't really need $400,000. My husband and I decided we really only want to borrow about $200,000 because we do not want to take on that much debt. We are afraid we can't really pay it back. But the Small Business Administration told us we have to borrow the $400,000 because if we don't, we cannot get a loan.

That is what is going on whether people want to believe it or not. And it gets worse. Not only are they forced to borrow more money than they need and more money than they really want, the Small Business Administration only sends them, say, $20,000 of the $400,000. Guess what their monthly amortization payment is on. It is not on the $20,000 that they have in hand, they have to pay based on the total amount. Every month, they are paying principal and interest on the $400,000, not the $20,000 they have in hand. That is the system under which our small businesses are operating.

I am begging the Senate to send more money, not through the regular channels, but this money will go through a different channel to give different grants and loans to these businesses in hopes we can save many of them. Some of them have been lost and can never be rebuilt. The business owners have moved and gone to other places. But there are many extraordinarily brave business owners who not only want to build their businesses back but build their communities back. The least we can do is give them programs that actually meet them halfway, that really work, and stop burying them in paperwork and redtape, rules that make no sense. It is enough to make someone want to quit. I would not blame them. But people are not going to quit in the gulf coast.

As we pass the supplemental, it adds to some additional funding we already passed. We will keep working until we get it right, building a better school system, a better health care system, building levees and support to protect this area because the people of the gulf coast contribute much more than they take to the strength of this national economy.

Off of this coast, wealth is created not just for the people who live there but for this Nation. We are going to prepare ourselves for this next hurricane season, pass the supplemental, and look with confidence to the future as we continue to make progress.

Mr. President, I wish to speak about Governor Kempthorne's nomination, and now confirmation by this body, to be Secretary of the Interior, and I hope he will help us work through a compromise that has eluded this Nation for some 45 years.

The Secretary of the Interior is in a pivotal position to help bring reason and rationale to this debate. I think that we, by confirming him this morning, have put the right man in the job for what is ahead.

The Secretary of the Interior helps lead the debate and discussion about the Nation's energy policies. There are many facets of that policy, and it is multidimensional. It is one of the toughest issues faced by this Congress. Because it is so regional, it brings very passionate debate on both sides of the issue.

I was pleased to cast my vote this morning for Governor Kempthorne, a former Member of this body, and a man who has shown a great deal of ability in terms of mediating very difficult issues. He showed that skill when he was a Member of the Senate, and I have no doubt that he will show the same skill as he becomes Secretary of the Department of the Interior.

One of the issues on which I look forward to working with him and my colleagues is the issue I have spoken about so many times on the Senate floor relative to offshore oil and gas drilling, a balance, a partnership of mutual respect between the Gulf Coast States and the Nation regarding a partnership that is mutually beneficial.

As the Nation struggles to find new ways to produce oil and gas using the

great minds of this Nation and the great technology that has been developed; as the Nation needs so desperately more oil and more gas, particularly natural gas; with the prices so high so that supplies can be increased and, hopefully, demand can be reduced, prices can come down, prices can stabilize, and the entire economy, from the Midwest to the Northeast to the far West can benefit from that effort, I wanted to show a graph of what I am speaking about because I think a picture is worth a thousand words, and I know I only have a few more minutes. This is why I continue to come to the Senate floor to say that the gulf coast is America's only energy coast.

This represents the miles and miles of pipeline, rigs, and infrastructure that have been developed in the Gulf of Mexico since the first well was drilled off of Creole, LA, in the gulf in the 1940s. By the way, that community was just completely wiped out in the last hurricanes, Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. But right off of Creole, a tiny little community in southwest Louisiana, the first offshore oil platform was drilled. Subsequently, over decades this infrastructure has been built and it has been built better and better and stronger using better technology, and as a result this country has benefited significantly from this contribution.

Another way to look at it is the oil and gas leasing that has occurred--which Secretary Kempthorne will now be responsible for, how these leases occur, where they occur, and when they occur. As you can see, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas have served as hosts to this industry, and we have served proudly. But there is a crisis now in the Gulf of Mexico, and it was brought to the televisions of every American--every American--with the landfall of Katrina and Rita and the subsequent flooding.

This is the devastation that has occurred along the gulf coast, the flooding in the city of New Orleans and in communities throughout Louisiana, and the frightening and real erosion of America's only coastal wetlands the coastal wetlands of Louisiana. We have lost over a million square miles of wetlands, and we are losing 33 football fields a day. Thirty-three football fields a day are being lost in this great and extraordinary wetland.

When people say: Senator, how are the beaches in Louisiana?

I say: We don't have beaches in Louisiana. We love the beaches that are in Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. We have vacationed on them our whole lives. But we have the greatest delta system in America, built over a million years by the Mississippi River itself, the land that we actually live on. On this land are great wetlands that supply fishing, that host and serve as the home of the mighty Mississippi River, and serve as a platform for oil and gas.

As the Secretary will come to know, this oil and gas could not be retrieved or mined from the Gulf of Mexico without the partnership of these Gulf Coast States. So what we are asking for is fairness. We are asking for a percentage, a percentage in dollars, from this drilling to come back into this area and help us restore our wetlands and invest in the infrastructure necessary to protect this great coast so that we can provide our people with a bright and strong economic future.

I am going to submit a longer statement for the Record. Again, I submit, looking at this chart, and just showing one more, that when we say the gulf coast is America's energy coast, these are the pipelines that come from the Gulf of Mexico. You can see even the Rocky Mountains. We are proud of the production that goes out West. We are proud of that production. But as you can see, a lot of our gas is coming from Canada and, hopefully, more of our gas will come from Alaska.

I see my friend and colleague from Alaska, the senior Senator, on the Senate floor. We hope we can get more gas from Canada and from Alaska because we need it. But I want people to see where the gas is coming from. The gas is coming from Louisiana, and if you want more of it, then, No. 1, help us to save our State from washing away in the gulf; and, No. 2, help us to share in some of these revenues that will go right back into these communities to support the industry and the people and the schools and the churches and the towns that make this all possible. And, if not, then go find your gas somewhere else. I mean that. Go find it somewhere else because we have a lot of it down here. We are happy to give it, but we need some respect and cooperation on this point.

The Senator from Alaska is here to speak, and I am going to be back later this afternoon to finish the remarks that I want to put in the Record. I see Secretary Kempthorne standing here. I appreciate him being on the floor to hear these remarks. I am looking forward to having him come to Louisiana. I said he is not much use to us with a broken foot, so he has to get that foot fixed and then come on back so we can take him out to offshore oil and gas rigs. He has promised to do that, and I am sure he will get up to Alaska sometime soon to see the great work that Alaska does. He, of course, is very familiar, having been the Governor of Idaho, with the West. But, Governor, we are looking forward to having you come down and visit us on the gulf coast.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on rollcall vote No. 131, I voted yea. It was my intention to vote nay. Given this does not change the outcome of the vote, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to change my vote. This will in no way change the outcome of the vote.

Mr. President, one of the most frequent complaints I have been hearing from people in Louisiana whose homes sustained damage in Katrina and Rita has been about their property insurance. First, it took insurance companies a long time to get adjusters into the area after the storm and many people are still waiting for claim payments. This was followed by the shock for many of our homeowners that their property insurance policies covered wind damage, but not flood damage. They could get the roof replaced, but the rest of the house was lost. Many of them were not required to have flood insurance because they either did not live in a flood plain or did not have a mortgage. And now we are beginning to discover that many insurance companies are no longer writing policies in Louisiana.

Our homeowners weathered one, and in some cases two, hurricanes already. However, now it's as if our homeowners have been hit by another hurricane--one causing a flood of red ink, lost homes, ruined lives, and broken communities.

I hope we never see another storm like Katrina. I would not want any of my colleagues' states to face the one-two punch of two hurricanes the way Louisiana was. But hurricane season is coming again, starting next week on June 1. These insurance issues and problems are going to come again. We can rebuild levees and use the lessons of Katrina to better prepare for these storms, but finding a solution to this insurance issue is much harder.

First of all, insurance is regulated at the State level. We do not control it up here. In all fairness, property casualty insurance companies do not cover flood damage because that is covered by the National Flood Insurance Program at FEMA. But the potential for flooding from hurricanes still remains and our insurance system is not ready to handle the amount of uninsured damage a massive storm like Katrina.

I am pleased to join my colleague from Florida, Senator Nelson, as a cosponsor of the Commission on Catastrophic Disaster Risk and Insurance Act of 2006. This bill will not produce major changes in the insurance industry overnight, but it will begin to take a look at this issue to identify the best solution to ensuring that home and business owners will have insurance coverage to help them rebuild after catastrophic natural disasters.

The commission established by this legislation will take the first steps for assessing the casualty insurance market and recommend any necessary legislative changes to ensure that consumers will have readily available and affordable insurance coverage to protect them from natural disasters. Experts from a wide variety of fields in disaster preparedness, construction engineering, the insurance industry, and government will serve on the commission. While the members will be chosen on a bipartisan basis, they will be taking a nonpartisan approach to this subject.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. It is a first step--a modest step--toward ensuring the financial security of Americans in the face of catastrophic disasters.

Mr. President, one of the most frequent complaints I have been hearing from people in Louisiana whose homes sustained damage in Katrina and Rita has been about their property insurance. First, it took insurance companies a long time to get adjusters into the area after the storm and many people are still waiting for claim payments. This was followed by the shock for many of our homeowners that their property insurance policies covered wind damage, but not flood damage. They could get the roof replaced, but the rest of the house was lost. Many of them were not required to have flood insurance because they either did not live in a flood plain or did not have a mortgage. And now we are beginning to discover that many insurance companies are no longer writing policies in Louisiana.

Our homeowners weathered one, and in some cases two, hurricanes already. However, now it's as if our homeowners have been hit by another hurricane--one causing a flood of red ink, lost homes, ruined lives, and broken communities.

I hope we never see another storm like Katrina. I would not want any of my colleagues' states to face the one-two punch of two hurricanes the way Louisiana was. But hurricane season is coming again, starting next week on June 1. These insurance issues and problems are going to come again. We can rebuild levees and use the lessons of Katrina to better prepare for these storms, but finding a solution to this insurance issue is much harder.

First of all, insurance is regulated at the State level. We do not control it up here. In all fairness, property casualty insurance companies do not cover flood damage because that is covered by the National Flood Insurance Program at FEMA. But the potential for flooding from hurricanes still remains and our insurance system is not ready to handle the amount of uninsured damage a massive storm like Katrina.

I am pleased to join my colleague from Florida, Senator Nelson, as a cosponsor of the Commission on Catastrophic Disaster Risk and Insurance Act of 2006. This bill will not produce major changes in the insurance industry overnight, but it will begin to take a look at this issue to identify the best solution to ensuring that home and business owners will have insurance coverage to help them rebuild after catastrophic natural disasters.

The commission established by this legislation will take the first steps for assessing the casualty insurance market and recommend any necessary legislative changes to ensure that consumers will have readily available and affordable insurance coverage to protect them from natural disasters. Experts from a wide variety of fields in disaster preparedness, construction engineering, the insurance industry, and government will serve on the commission. While the members will be chosen on a bipartisan basis, they will be taking a nonpartisan approach to this subject.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. It is a first step--a modest step--toward ensuring the financial security of Americans in the face of catastrophic disasters.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to lay aside the pending amendment.

Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, I thank the manager of this bill for accepting this amendment and for basically agreeing to it. I am very hopeful that no one will show up and object to this amendment because it has broad bipartisan support. I offer it on behalf of myself, Senator DeMint, Senator Craig, Senator Brownback, and others who have worked for years to bring this amendment to a position of getting it approved on the Senate floor.

This amendment was actually started by one of our colleagues and a great mutual friend of many of us, Senator Don Nickles, the former Senator from Oklahoma, who spent a great deal of his career, besides being an expert in finance and budget matters, as a tremendous advocate for adopted children, for families with adopted children, and to make the process more accountable, more transparent, to remove the barriers to adoption, to remove any corruption associated with adoption, and, most of all, was such a ferocious and effective advocate for children who need homes.

We have millions of children around the world who need an opportunity for a family. When Senator Jesse Helms was here many years ago, Senator Helms and Senator Joe Biden led the joint bipartisan effort to pass a new treaty that was a model for the world, that was profound in its essence, that basically said children should be raised in families, not alone, not in a cardboard box, not in a ditch, not under a highway somewhere, not left alone but should be raised and nurtured by a family.

I do not know what took us so long to come to that. Governments do a lot of things well, but raising children isn't one of them. Children should be raised in a family.

They set about creating a treaty, which has now been agreed to by many countries in the world, to set up a process of international adoption which goes something like this: Every child should try to stay with the parents who bring them into the world, but if they are separated from those parents by death, disease, war, famine, violence, or perhaps in some cases, as we know, the terrible thing of parental abuse, and children have to be removed to keep them safe and keep them alive, then we need to find another home for those children as quickly as possible--in their extended family, the treaty says.

After that, if there is no extended family opportunity somewhere in the community, and if there is no family that can be found in the community, then some family in the country. But if no family can be found in that country suitable to raise a child with siblings, which is what the treaty says, to try to keep siblings together, then the children have a right to try to find a family somewhere in the world because, frankly, we are one human family.

I am so aggravated, as you can tell a little bit, that it has taken us so long to pass something that is quite so simple. I am very interested, if a Senator wants to come and debate this issue. We only have 10 minutes to debate it. I wish we had more time. I am going to be very interested if someone wants to debate this. I don't think a Senator is going to come and oppose it. We have been trying to pass it.

There are some objections by the State Department. When Senator Helms passed the original treaty, they didn't think this was a big enough issue for them. Of course, they have very serious issues to deal with-- the war in Iraq and other things. But some of us think American citizens adopting children from all over the world deserve a little support from their own Government to get this done.

Parents go through a lot, some of them, to build their families through adoption, and some parents want to expand their families through adoption, and at great expense to themselves. It is a very fundamental value for Americans to want to do this, and 20,000 Americans do this every year. Some Members of Congress have adopted children from overseas.

The bottom line is, this bill, which is the Intercountry Adoption Reform Act, helped to establish a center in the State Department. It streamlines the bureaucracy. It eliminates a lot of red tape, and hopefully it will eliminate the cost. But it also makes sure that there is a central agency that works with the States and with our adoption agencies around the country. It just makes the process work better.

As I have said--and I am going to conclude with this--our children are adopted, and I am proud of that. Our children are adopted from this country. But I know hundreds and thousands of people who have children adopted from other countries.

We are proud of this process that has been implemented. We need to pass this bill to make sure that when children come into this country they come in as citizens--just as American citizens give birth to a child overseas, they become automatic citizens. They don't need the extra step of a visa.

In addition to setting up a certification process for agencies that will be very helpful and effective as we again try to eliminate barriers to adoption and give parents a central agency which is required under this treaty, which all the countries now in the world are moving to, and while it respects our States' roles and respects the role of adoption agencies, it provides a central place where this important work can take place and have a focus.

That is basically what it does.

I think Senator DeMint wanted to speak on behalf of this amendment. I will be happy to answer any questions, and I will stay here on the floor until our time has expired.

I sincerely submit this to my colleagues. Hopefully, it can be accepted,

as the Senator from Massachusetts and the Senator from Pennsylvania indicated. It might be accepted without a rollcall vote.

I thank the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. President, I have no objection to that. Could the Senator give me some timeframe? Would it be on for another hour or 2 or will this go on for several days?

I understand we could do this, which sounds fine to me: We would be voting sometime today either by voice or rollcall.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, could I just be added to the list of speakers?

Thirty minutes.