Hurricane Katrina
Floor Speech
HURRICANE KATRINA -- (Senate - September 06, 2005)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise to speak, as my colleagues have before me, about the terrible tragedy in the Gulf Coast. As the rescue and recovery in the Gulf Coast continues, as we pray for each life, my thoughts, for instance, always go back to 9/11, the tragedy that befell my city and State.
It is sort of a horrible thing to say, in a certain sense, about the number of people who died, but people thought the number of deaths in our State and our city would be much greater than it was. I think about a week after the planes hit the Twin Towers, most people were talking about over 10,000 people dying. As I said, I feel awkward saying this, but it is a true thought we all have, that only 3,000 were found to have passed. Still, it is an awful number, and the families miss those people every single day. I knew some of them myself. I miss them and think of them. But we hope and pray this happens in Louisiana, that the horrible numbers we have heard about--the possible number of deaths--are significantly lower.
One other thought I want to mention about New York, before getting into the substance of my remarks, is that this morning I was privileged to attend a groundbreaking for the new New York/New Jersey rail station to be built at Ground Zero. It will be a beautiful and sweeping station. The architect, the world-famous Mr. Calatrava, got the idea of a child releasing a dove at the station. At least by the designs and pictures I have seen, it will be a soaring and sweeping station.
At that memorial I thought about the victims and the people of the Gulf. I said to them that a week after the planes hit the Twin Towers, we were filled with despair, anguish, anger, and thought there would never be any hope after something that horrible happened. But the human condition is a remarkable one. And, of course, hope is always with us, as the Greek mythological story of Pandora's box shows.
The groundbreaking that Senators CLINTON and LAUTENBERG and CORZINE and I attended this morning with the Governors of New York and New Jersey shows us there is always hope. This station--a beautiful, sweeping, soaring station--will rise like a phoenix out of the ashes of 9/11.
I say to my colleagues who represent the Gulf States, as well as to all the people in the Gulf States: Hope will return. It is hard to see now, with so much devastation and so much anguish and so much sadness, but it will return. Just as in New York we are rebuilding ourselves, hopefully to be bigger and better and stronger than we were before 9/11, I know that, too, will happen with the people in the gulf region. So my thoughts are with them. All of our thoughts are with them.
Because of the devastation of Katrina, we confront one of the most extraordinary challenges this Nation has ever faced: To feed, to clothe, to house, to help an estimated 1 million Americans who were displaced and who now have to rebuild their lives.
The disaster area is some 90,000 square miles. That is almost double the entire State of New York. It is an area nearly as large as the United Kingdom. The amount of damage to the homes, the businesses, the schools, the infrastructure, the roads, the bridges is in the tens of billions of dollars, most certainly. It is already estimated, for instance, that Louisiana alone has lost at least 110,000 businesses. And that number is likely to climb as we calculate the full extent of the damage.
The images on TV are devastating. They are of hungry, weeping children, of families returning to the destroyed remains of their neighborhoods, discovering they have lost everything they have owned, from precious family keepsakes to their houses and cars and livelihoods. The pictures of angry, frightened people, with nowhere to go, unsure of what will happen to themselves and their loved ones rings a deep chord in every one of our hearts. And there are the deaths of so many. The psychological toll of this tragedy will be heavy indeed, especially, of course, on the children. Another thing we learned after 9/11 is to pay particular attention to the children. Sometimes it took them, in New York, over a year to speak about what they had seen.
When my city faced a devastating attack, America stood with us in our time of need. I want to assure the people of the gulf region that New Yorkers--I think I can say probably just about every one of the 19 million New Yorkers--will stand with you, the people of the gulf region, as you stood with us in the dark days immediately following 9/11.
The love and support New Yorkers received from the rest of the country after 9/11 meant so much in the wake of those attacks and the long, difficult road to recovery. I want the people of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast to know we will support them, too, no matter how long, no matter how difficult their recovery may be. We will do whatever it takes to help now, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, and on into the future.
We took the first step last week when Congress provided $10.5 billion in desperately needed disaster relief funds to the devastated region. But as I learned in the aftermath of 9/11, money is only the first step. The next step is to ensure that bureaucratic rules and regulations do not prevent the money from being spent quickly and where it is most needed. We discovered after 9/11 that the rules governing how Federal dollars can be spent and benefits accessed--from HUD to the Department of Transportation to the IRS--became insurmountable obstacles for so many of our citizens in need. And many of the problems faced after 9/11 will be faced a thousandfold for Hurricane Katrina because there are so many more people and businesses that were hurt.
It is essential that Congress take action as quickly as possible on as many fronts as possible. Every day makes a difference for those seeking a place to live, a way to get their children back to school, to get health care, to get a job. So many jobs are gone. Furthermore, after 9/11, Congress tackled many of the problems facing Hurricane Katrina victims and has a template to work with. And Senator Reid, working with our committee leaders, has already compiled a list of action items Congress should address this week.
Before I get into those action items, I want to say one other thing. We do need the most competent people running the agencies that are in charge of this recovery effort. And I heard, an hour or so ago on the floor, our colleague, my friend, Senator Mikulski, speak on that issue. We all know Senator Mikulski is somebody who knows FEMA and the agencies involved with recovery extremely well because as chairperson and as ranking Democrat on the relevant appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over FEMA, she knows them. We also know she is a temperate person in the sense that she does not regularly get up and demand that people step down. But when she spoke on the floor an hour ago and said that the FEMA head, Brown, should either step down or be forced to step down, I think all of us should listen to her. These are serious times, and fingers of blame should not be pointed at any one place. But to make sure we have the most competent people in charge as the rescue effort proceeds is very important. So again I want to urge my colleagues to listen to what Senator Mikulski had to say because I think it is extremely important to us.
Now, getting back to the list that Senator Reid, working with some of our committee leaders, has compiled, it is a list of action items, and I hope Congress will address it this week. The list includes providing Medicaid, housing vouchers, and emergency cash for all displaced victims, waiving deadlines, and expediting applications where necessary, and waiving the requirements to prove residency or asset levels or to provide other paperwork which, of course, so many of those who have lost everything in their lives no longer have. The Reid package also proposes tax incentives for families who take in victims, and identifying Federal facilities that can house them.
The proposal also focuses on helping the tens of thousands of children who need to get enrolled quickly into schools around the country by providing those schools with financial assistance and waiving the usual bureaucratic requirements for enrollment. I believe this must be one of our highest priorities. Since the hurricane occurred right at the beginning of the school year, there is not a day to waste. We cannot let our children simply hang out there without providing for their education, which, Katrina or not, means their future.
My heart grieves at the sight of so many of these children sitting around the Astrodome and other shelters with no place to go. It is September. Let us pledge to get all those children, who have faced so much trauma already, into school by the end of the month. We must provide the Federal dollars needed to bolster those schools that are opening their hearts and doors to these children, from Houston to San Francisco to Vermont. We must also provide these children with all they will need--food and shelter and school supplies--to keep their education on track.
We must also make sure our brave National Guard personnel, who are on the front lines abroad in Iraq and now here at home, receive all the assistance they need, from debt and student loan relief to allowing them to qualify for Federal health care and retirement benefits. Our Nation owes these American heroes nothing less.
Finally, the Reid proposal addresses what may ultimately be our most pressing challenge--finding employment for the victims of Katrina, by making employers eligible to claim the Work Opportunity Tax Credit of up to $2,400 per worker they hire. We need to do this and much more. With so many businesses and so much infrastructure destroyed, we will need both the Federal Government and the private sector to step to the plate and get people back to work.
Congress can and should tackle right away in these few weeks the problems that have been mentioned above. We should learn lessons from what we were able to do after 9/11 for New York. With a million people in need of assistance, it is inexcusable that we would delay. Let us move this package this week, not next week or the week after.
With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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