National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018--motion to Proceed--continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, I had the opportunity yesterday, along with the Coast Guard and the Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico, Jenniffer Gonzalez, to visit San Juan, Puerto Rico, to see firsthand some of the devastation that has impacted this U.S. territory. I would summarize it by saying that what I saw were more than 3.5 million American citizens potentially on the verge of a serious and growing humanitarian crisis.

There are a lot of reasons for this. The first is that Puerto Rico has been in the eye of not one but three storms. The first was Hurricane Irma, which impacted it a few weeks ago, followed by the devastation of Hurricane Maria, and preexisting these two things was a very significant fiscal crisis that placed extraordinary constraints on the ability of the territory's government both to prepare for the storm and now to respond to it.

Our traditional model of hurricane response--one that, unfortunately, because of numerous storms, I have come to know well as a resident of Florida--is that FEMA basically arrives in support of the State. When Florida gets hit by a storm and Texas gets hit by a storm, FEMA comes in to the State and tells the State: We are here to help. Tell us where to go, tell us what you need, and we will provide those resources to the places you want. It works that way. The President issues an emergency declaration, and it opens up FEMA and other disaster relief, and then the State government directs that assistance and tells them: This is what we need, this is where we need it, and this is what we can handle on our own. This model will not work in Puerto Rico. It will not work foremost because, as I stated earlier, the financial and fiscal constraints have limited its capacity to build its own internal ability to respond.

They had just finished repairing the damage from Irma a few weeks ago. So, literally, there are not nearly enough basic things like those wooden poles to hold up the electric lines or the transformers that are attached to them or even the lines themselves, and, in many cases, the fuel, power, and crews to get to the work sites.

It will not work because, in many cases, the government of Puerto Rico still does not have a full assessment of the damage of the storm.

While communication in San Juan is severely limited, in most of the other areas of the big island and smaller islands, communication is nonexistent.

Something was brought to my attention firsthand yesterday when we visited one of the Coast Guard centers and watched. Much of the response they are conducting there is limited to a paper map on the wall with some sticky note pads and four landlines on which they hope people can call in and get updates on what they are seeing in the field from a satellite phone. Hopefully, that has improved over the last 24 hours as more Coast Guard vessels have come in to support communications. But we still have large parts of Puerto Rico that have not communicated with the rest of the island, the government, or the outside world, for that matter, going on to today.

There are also logistical challenges. In most of the 50 States-- certainly in my home State of Florida, we saw the largest power restoration effort in the history of the world. At least that is what they are claiming. Literally, we saw hundreds of those bucket trucks from all over the United States--all 50 States and even Canada--coming in with prearranged contracts and their crews to restore power. Even with that dramatic level of response, there were people without power until late this weekend, and there are still a couple thousand people in Florida who have no power.

You can't drive a convoy of trucks into Puerto Rico. They have to come in on a barge, and those barges take 7 days from Jacksonville and 5 days from Miami, plus whatever time it takes to travel and position those crews to get there. You not only have to deliver the crews, you have to deliver the supplies in order to be able to restore power.

What is the practical impact of not having power? Having no power is not simply an inconvenience; for many people it is life and death.

Imagine an area outside of San Juan where someone is a diabetic and depends on insulin that needs to be refrigerated. That medicine has gone bad by now if they haven't run out. Imagine someone who needs dialysis twice a week. It has been longer than that since they have had it. Imagine if someone needs chemotherapy if they have cancer. That is not going to happen this week or next unless things change.

These are real challenges, and I raise them only because this is a disaster that will require an intensity of effort on behalf of the Federal Government that you would not traditionally see in a storm that impacts the mainland for the reasons I have outlined--and many more.

Now, the good news is, earlier today you saw the White House engage even more in terms of some of the things they are doing. There are more Department of Defense assets and, as a result of some restoration at the airport, the ability to land more planes more quickly. So, again, more things are coming in. The port opened fairly quickly, but the challenges remain.

Even if today we could approve $10 billion in assistance and somehow figured out a way to deliver it to Puerto Rico in the next 24 hours, they would still be challenged to take it from the airport to the seaport and deliver it to the places that need it the most because there are roads that are still not clear, because we still don't have a full assessment of where the damage is and where the need is most and, quite frankly, because there are probably roads and bridges in parts of Puerto Rico that will collapse if one of these big trucks drive over them.

I say this because there is only one entity in the world with the capacity to respond to all these various issues; that is, the Federal Government of the United States. Leveraging the power of the Department of Defense and an assortment of other agencies, it remains the only institution certainly in our country--and probably in the world--with a capacity to respond quickly and effectively to the crisis at hand.

While response to this storm will take a significant amount of patience, it will also take a significant amount of urgency. For each day that goes by, this crisis will get worse, not better. I fear that if, in fact, there is not enough urgency in the response, we will be talking about a very different set of stories in the days to come.

I hope I am wrong, with all of my heart, but I fear that when communication lines come back up and when we start getting more access to some of these areas that have been cut off, we are going to start learning that the toll and the impact of the storm is far worse than we had imagined. I pray with all my heart that someone will watch this video on YouTube one day and say: Oh, look, he was exaggerating. It wasn't that bad after all. I hope that is what happens, but I fear it will not, and every day that goes by, it will only get worse.

I don't believe it is fair to say that the response up to this point is because some people don't care or because they haven't paid enough attention to it. I honestly think it is just a challenge that is unique and that requires us to respond to it in ways we wouldn't traditionally respond, for the factors I have just pointed out.

In most places on the mainland, if not all, the States have a certain capacity internally to address this, but Puerto Rico, for the challenges I have just outlined--and particularly because of the storm that just passed--has already had many of those resources depleted.

There is positive news today. The USS Comfort, a ship that is a hospital ship, is on its way, but again it will take it a number of days to get there. The Federal Government has agreed to a 100-percent Federal match. It usually means the Federal Government paid a portion of it and the States pay the rest. The Federal Government, for the next 180 days, has agreed to 100 percent payment of these services, and that will be critical because these restoration crews are going to want to know how their costs are going to be paid if they show up and begin to restore power.

I just think it is imperative that we don't lose focus and don't lose sight of what is at hand because there are over 3 million American citizens in danger. A number of them--perhaps in the thousands--already have existing vulnerabilities and are in severe danger of losing their life and extraordinary human suffering.

I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who, throughout the day, have expressed a tremendous amount of interest in wanting to know how they can be helpful and what they can do. I think the most important thing we need to do now is to continue to drive the sense of urgency, to do all we can to bring to bear all of the resources the Federal Government can bring to assist in this recovery. Then we will be able to work together on not just rebuilding Puerto Rico but helping her to rebuild so she is stronger, more prosperous, and more stable than ever.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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