Hurricanes Harvey and Irma

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, for better or worse, history repeats itself--sometimes much sooner than we would like. We now know that Florida officials, as well as those up the east coast of the United States, have begun ordering evacuations as Hurricane Irma has intensified into a category 5 storm which could make landfall this weekend.

It is my sincere hope that all residents of Florida will be safe, as well as those in other States affected by Irma, and that they take proper precautions. If there is one thing we learned from Hurricane Harvey, it is the importance of listening to local officials and leaders when it comes to evacuations and precautionary measures. But whatever happens, we are going to stand by the people of Florida and the Carolinas and others affected, just as they have stood by us in Texas and Louisiana as a result of Hurricane Harvey. In the meantime, we pray that Irma's trajectory changes.

Down in Texas, of course, we are still thinking about another hurricane, and that is, of course, Hurricane Harvey. It is hard to believe, but not even 2 weeks have passed since the storm first tore through our towns, great and small. Of course, communities are still reeling from the devastation.

One I visited earlier this week is the Meyerland neighborhood in Houston. It has been flooded three times in 3 years. On Monday, I visited the home of a single mom who survived several recent storms unscathed, but this time, Harvey found her home and destroyed it. There is a pile of debris on her front lawn, ready to be picked up by dump trucks. As a matter of fact, as you drive down the street, house after house after house, there are piles of furniture, clothing, drywall, and other debris that has been pulled up and discarded and is ready to be picked up by the dump trucks. Throughout the region, there are piles like that stacked up in Rockport, Aransas Pass, Lake Jackson, and West Columbia. As recently as this week, let's remember, some of these places were still under mandatory evacuation orders as the rivers crested and higher waters moved downstream.

But here is my main point: As the rubble piles up and up and up, it is sometimes hard to see past the wreckage of the past weeks. Sometimes it is hard to see beyond what is right in front of you. That is why some simple words by historian David McCullough are good to keep in mind at times like this, as we continue to deal with Harvey's aftermath and worry what might follow with Irma.

McCullough said:

We think we live in difficult, uncertain times. We think we have worries. We think our leaders face difficult decisions.

But so it has nearly always been.

He is right. We have been through tough times before. We certainly have been through tough times in storms like Harvey in Texas before. As a matter of fact, back almost a little over a century ago, on September 8, 1900, a hurricane like Harvey--a category 4 hurricane--slammed into the city of Galveston, with winds surpassing 135 miles per hour. Two- thirds of the city was destroyed, and approximately 10,000 people lost their lives--10,000 people. By comparison, so far the death toll of Harvey is 70. So we can be grateful the death toll that was experienced in Galveston was not repeated. Like Galveston, the city of Houston and the surrounding area will recover.

Of course, back in 1900, it took a couple of days for the world to find out what had happened because communication was not what it is now, but when word finally spread, America noticed. One little girl in Chicago sent 10 cents to help because that was all she had--10 cents.

Well, that was probably worth a lot more back then than it is now, but it certainly is a lot for a little child. Her story reminds me of a 5- year-old boy in Philadelphia I heard about last week who set up a lemonade stand. Wearing a ``Houston Texans'' hat, he raised more than $400 for victims of Hurricane Harvey. How remarkable.
What has changed since Galveston? Quite a bit. One crucial difference is that we have gotten a lot better at disaster prediction and response. As a matter of fact, my State--from the Governor on down to our local officials--plans for disasters like these and anticipates them, and it is that planning which has reduced the loss of life and gotten people out of harm's way.

Houston's $503 billion economy will hopefully bounce back quickly, and with our help, it should. The fourth largest city in the country is known for energy, and that is what we here in Washington must devote to ensuring that aid relief is expedited. Supplemental funding to aid the Harvey recovery needs to be voted on promptly. Our friends in the House did it yesterday, and now it will be our turn this afternoon.

The Senate will soon consider legislation that will keep the government's lights on until December 8 and increase the Nation's borrowing capacity. This is important because without lifting the debt limit, we couldn't vote for and send aid to the victims of Harvey because we would be bumping up against the debt ceiling.

More importantly, this afternoon we will consider $15 billion in new emergency funds. These will be available to Texas families who, like the woman I met in Meyerland, are removing their rugs and furniture and rebuilding the very walls of their homes. These funds include $7.4 billion to FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund, as well as $7.4 billion to HUD's Community Development Block Grant Program and $450 million for the Small Business Administration Disaster Loan Program.

As large as these numbers are, with more than 100,000 people who have actually lost their homes, this is a downpayment, unfortunately, on what will be additional costs that Congress will have to vote on. As a matter of fact, after Hurricane Katrina, Congress voted on seven separate supplemental appropriations before the job was done. As I said, these are large numbers but not in the context of this unprecedented hurricane which dropped 50 inches of rain in 5 days on the city of Houston and the surrounding area. I hope my colleagues will keep in mind the scope of this catastrophe and deliver this funding to those whom Harvey has cost much more than just dollars.

Getting back to the Texas economy, which I mentioned just a second ago, I want to talk about how important it is to get my State back up and running, because it is so important to the U.S. economy.

As columnist Brett Stephens wrote last week, ``Economic growth isn't just a matter of parking lots paving over paradise.'' Companies oftentimes do real, tangible good. What matters for us today is that they underwrite safety

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standards and fund scientific research, and they develop new technologies to warn us of impending storms and engineer new materials that make buildings more secure. That is probably one of the biggest reasons why the damage from Hurricane Harvey didn't compare to the damage from the Galveston hurricane of 1900--because of building standards, building codes, and new materials that have been devised to help make buildings more secure. That is why Harvey wasn't like Galveston in 1900, and in the days and weeks ahead, we need to remember how far we have come. That is not to say we still don't have a long way to go.

While the strong Texas economy is crucial to recovery efforts, education will be too. Thousands of Texas schoolchildren have been displaced by Hurricane Harvey, and many public school children are still wondering when their classrooms will be opened, if at all, or whether they will simply be transferred to other schools because their schools literally do not exist anymore.

Yesterday, I spoke with Mike Morath, commissioner of Texas public education, who told me about the many challenges schools in Texas are now facing. For example, an entire school district in Rockport, TX, is closed indefinitely, leaving more than 3,000 students without friends and teachers to go to school with. In the Houston Independent School District, more than 200 schools were affected by the flooding, with at least 50 suffering extensive damage.

Our healthcare facilities are also dealing with other concerns. Bill McKeon, president of the Texas Medical Center--one of the largest medical centers in the world--told us that his employees had problems getting to work due to road closures, debris, and families without homes and vehicles. When your office is in the world's biggest medical complex and employs more than 100,000 people, that is a big problem. It is a big problem, but we are going to deal with it.

Like Galveston in 1900, like New Orleans after Katrina, these storms humble us but provide us the way to show the human spirit and ingenuity that so routinely follows as we rebuild and recover.

Once again, David McCullough's words are useful. He said: ``A sense of history is an antidote to self-pity and self-importance.'' Colleagues, let's keep in mind those wise words of David McCullough as we weather this storm and brace ourselves for the next.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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