Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2019

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CRUZ. Madam President, I rise today to recognize the first anniversary of Hurricane Harvey's destruction along the Texas gulf coast. This Saturday, August 25, marks 1 year since the most destructive storm in Texas history made landfall.

Hurricane Harvey is now considered the second most costly hurricane in U.S. history, second only to Hurricane Katrina, but more importantly and more tragically, Hurricane Harvey took many, many precious lives. Harvey started out as a category 4 storm hitting South Texas, making landfall at Corpus Christi, Victoria, Port Aransas, Rockport, Aransas Pass, and Refugio, doing devastating damages with 135-mile-an-hour winds.

It took down powerlines. It stopped fresh water. It clogged sewage systems. It devastated people's homes and people's businesses.

I visited each of those communities many, many times in the weeks and months that followed Hurricane Harvey, and I have seen the transition those communities have undergone in dealing with the disaster and then rebuilding.

But Harvey wasn't done after making landfall. Then, it moved north and east, parking over the city of Houston and just sitting there. Over a 6-day period, Harvey dumped 27 trillion gallons of rain over Texas and Louisiana, causing historic flooding--flooding that is not a 100- year flood, not a 500-year flood, but a 1,000-year flood.

In southeastern Texas, Hurricane Harvey dropped rainfall of more than 60 inches, which exceeds the annual rainfall on average for that region. Over 300,000 structures were flooded in southeast Texas, and a half million cars. More than 200,000 single family homes were flooded across the State, many of which were not in flood plains and not deemed to be at risk of floods.

But we don't mark this anniversary in a spirit of tragedy--rather, in a spirit of triumph. There were many bright lights that cut through the darkness of the storm. There were the police and first responders who led thousands of families to safety. Some, like Sergeant Perez of the Houston Police Department, made the ultimate sacrifice while protecting his community.

There were over 17,000 national guardsmen who answered the call from Texas and from all around the country.

The U.S. Coast Guard rescued 11,022 people and 1,384 pets during the storm. There were countless acts of heroism from folks next door, from church basements offering shelter to neighbors, people making human chains, plucking one another out of the flood waters, and from our countrymen in the Cajun Navy, who boldly answered the call with memories of Katrina still fresh and vivid, to business owners like my friend Mattress Mack, who threw open the doors to give entire communities shelter, warmth, and comfort.

I have never been prouder to be a Texan than I was in the days during and after Hurricane Harvey, when you saw ordinary Texans risking their lives to save each other. There were no party lines. There were no Republicans and Democrats. There wasn't Black, White, Hispanic, or Asian. We were simply Texans helping Texans, standing as one, united. We were lifted up by prayers from millions across Texas, across the country, and across the world.

I remember one gentleman I met. It was at the George R. Brown Convention Center, which had been stood up as a shelter for the many who had lost their homes. I was there one morning volunteering, serving oatmeal. Next to me, someone else was volunteering, serving oatmeal as well, and I said to him, as I tried to say to many, many people throughout that tragedy: Thank you. Thank you for the difference you are making. Thank you for helping out your fellow Texans. Thank you for being here.

I remember he laughed, and he said: Well, I have to be here. My home is underwater. I don't have another place to sleep.

Even though he had gone to seek shelter, once he got there, he wasn't content simply to receive aid and assistance. He wanted to help out. That was the spirit and the community that we saw all up and down the gulf coast.

I remember visiting with two young boys. They were 8 and 10 years old. They were in their home when water rose to waist level, and they had to be rescued by boat. I remember visiting with these boys and saying: Was that scary? How are you doing?

Both boys started laughing, and they said: Are you kidding? We got to swim in our living room.

That kind of joy suffused dealing with the tragedy.

Since the flood waters have receded, many, many families have returned home. Some bravely made a home in new surroundings, and the long, important work of rebuilding has continued.

One year ago, you could take a boat through city streets. I still remember riding on a boat down Clay Road, a road in northwest Houston. I became a Christian at Clay Road Baptist Church. Clay Road was under 8 to 10 feet of water, and I remember taking a boat over cars, over trucks, going right down the middle of Clay Road.

Today, our communities are coming back stronger than ever. Our businesses are once more a part of the Texas booming economy. Our neighborhoods ring with laughter, lawnmowers, and barbecue grills.

I am humbled and grateful to say that the amazing success of recovery has been helped by the willingness of Congress to recognize the extraordinary crisis caused by Harvey and to step up in a bipartisan manner to address it. Since Harvey made landfall, Congress has appropriated over $140 billion in emergency funding to respond to the 2017 hurricane season and to the California wildfires. Over three separate bills, we came together and made it possible to clean debris, to open schools, to rebuild homes for families, and to give entire towns a new start.

My colleague Senator Cornyn and I have worked hand in hand on each of these relief bills in the Senate, increasing the funds available to hurricane victims from those that originally had come over from the House, increasing the overall amount of funding for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for flood prevention projects, as well as for funding other mitigation activities under the Community Development Block Grant Program and the Disaster Recovery Program.

Last month, as part of this funding, the Army Corps announced that Texas would receive nearly $5 billion for projects in the State as part of its disaster supplemental funding plan--projects dealing with long- term flood mitigation to prevent this sort of tragedy from occurring again and to rebuild in a way that is stronger and more resilient and that protects homes and businesses and families. This means that roughly half of the relevant Army Corps construction funds will go to projects in Texas intended to help to prevent future flooding events.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has awarded over $10 billion in community development block grant disaster recovery funds to Texas. These crucial funds will go a long way and already have to meet the needs of Texans who are continuing to repair and to rebuild from Harvey.

We also joined together to pass an emergency tax relief bill. I joined with Senator Cornyn and Senator Rubio, and together the Cruz- Cornyn-Rubio bill granted over $5 billion in emergency tax relief to those who had been impacted by these hurricanes, allowing people who had lost their homes or had seen devastating damage to their homes to deduct those damages from their taxes and allowing people to take money from their retirement savings--their IRAs and their 401(k)s--and to use those savings to rebuild their homes without paying the ordinary 10 percent early withdrawal fee. It also gave a tax credit to employers-- the many, many small businesses who kept the paychecks coming even as the businesses may have been underwater and even as the employees couldn't come into work because their homes and cars were flooded.

Until recently, houses of worship had been excluded from Federal disaster assistance just for being faith based. That policy was wrong. It was discriminatory. Many religious institutions were badly damaged or destroyed during Hurricane Harvey.

I remember visiting a synagogue in Meyerland, a neighborhood of Houston, that had been flooded repeatedly and badly. I went to work with my colleagues, introducing legislation to fix this problem. A few months later, FEMA announced a critical reversal in their policy so that houses of worship would no longer be discriminated against and would be eligible for the same relief funds as everybody else. Then, in February, our legislation codified FEMA's decision into law, ensuring that religious institutions were not discriminated against. We protected the First Amendment rights of our churches, our temples, and our synagogues, which had suffered so greatly in Harvey and contributed so much to the relief efforts.

That was one of the striking things--how many people who were helping themselves had been damaged.

Just over a week ago, I visited Ellington Base, meeting with the Coast Guardsmen, the swimmers and pilots who had gone into harm's way. For many of them, their own homes were underwater. I visited with one Coast Guard pilot who had to walk through waist-high water to get to a parking lot where a helicopter could go and pick them up so they could fly and save others.

That story, over and over, was the story of Harvey.

One year after Harvey's devastation, the work continues. The Texas gulf coast continues to recover, and it will take years for the rebuilding to be complete, but as the Lone Star State rebuilds stronger than ever, we will keep moving forward.

May we never forget the tragic days that Harvey hit our shores, but may we always remember the heroes who triumphed in the midst of the darkness, the brave men and women who were a light to their country. They are the best of America. They are the best of Texas. God bless them all, and may God continue to bless the great State of Texas.

I field the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source