Calling for Vote on Disaster Funding

Floor Speech

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Mr. AUSTIN SCOTT of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, Mr. Dunn, for leading this effort. I know his district was hit probably harder than any other district in the United States.

Madam Speaker, I rise today alongside many of my fellow colleagues to again stress the hardships many of our fellow Americans faced following these devastating natural disasters of 2018.

On October 10, 2018, Hurricane Michael entered my home State of Georgia as a Category 3 storm. With it, we saw widespread damage from dangerous winds, flooding, and torrential rains. Hurricane Michael traced a path of destruction through south and middle Georgia, straddling both mine and Congressman Sanford Bishop's districts.

Our districts are largely rural areas that have also been hit hard by tornadoes and flooding in recent years. These areas are key to the State's agriculture sector, which is Georgia's number one industry.

Madam Speaker, the American farmer is the backbone of agriculture, and agriculture is Georgia's number one industry.

Fearing the worst of this storm, many farmers began harvesting what they could as Hurricane Michael crept closer and closer to Georgia. It was the best yield we had seen in years for what was gathered before the storm hit. After years of low commodity prices, unfair trade practices, labor shortages, and consecutive years of devastating storms, we needed it. Once Hurricane Michael hit, it was all gone. Not only did we lose billions of dollars in commodity crops, like cotton and peanuts, but we also lost orchards and forests that will take decades to regrow.

Since the day after the storm, I have worked side by side with my friend and colleague, Congressman Bishop, in an effort to bring our communities impacted by Hurricane Michael tools they need to recover and rebuild. At every turn, we have worked together to bring attention to the crisis and to bring relief to these farmers alongside our other colleagues who have been impacted.

The President and Vice President personally came down and promised help. I was there. For months, we have stressed the magnitude of the damage to our colleagues, and for months we were promised this was a priority for the White House and congressional leadership from both sides of the aisle.

``Any bill to fund the Government has disaster relief.'' I don't know how many times I have heard it. I can't name all the people I have heard it from. As we stand here today 6 months later, these can only be called empty promises.

Never before have we seen American communities that were wrecked with catastrophes neglected like this. To this day, OMB has not even submitted a request for disaster assistance, calls to White House staff have gone unheeded, and but for one tweet on April 1, it seems the President has moved on.

For months I have received calls from farmers and the lenders they rely on that the financial impacts from Hurricane Michael were becoming increasingly more difficult to bear. Then last week, the Senate showed how truly ugly and partisan politics have become, voting down a measure that would have brought billions in Federal relief that communities in my home State of Georgia and around the country desperately need to get back on their feet again, money to restore infrastructure and restore services, as well as farm aid.

Certainly, no one would have stood in the way of disaster relief for States like Vermont or New York. Rural Americans, we have been forgotten. We were forgotten again last week in the Senate's failure to pass disaster assistance.

Rural Americans are Americans, too, whether the press likes it or not, and whether certain Members of the Senate like it or not. They need our help to rebuild. If the Senate cannot pass a bill to provide this Federal disaster assistance, the bottom line is farm bankruptcies will continue, and I fear that the community banks and businesses that support the farm sector will too.

The truth is if Hurricane Michael had hit Americans who aren't farmers or farmers who aren't Americans, the stories of Washington's apathy to get things done would be the front page of every paper.

Mr. Speaker, the American farmers work day in and day out to feed and clothe America and the world. I urge the White House and the Congress to reverse their course of abandoning our farmers and keep the promises that were made to them.

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