Motion to Discharge

Floor Speech

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Mr. CASSIDY. Madam President, I rise, as I have before, to explain the urgent need to pass a supplemental disaster assistance bill. But this time it is not just for Hurricane Laura, which hit southwest Louisiana over a year ago; it now includes Hurricane Ida, the fifth- most powerful storm to hit the United States, which hit Southeast Louisiana last month.

And here, for example, is some of the flooding that was related to Hurricane Ida. I should point out, by the way, that this is not considered a flood event. Well, if it is not considered a flood event, that looks like pretty bad flooding. This is considered a wind event; and so even when it is not considered a flood event, you see almost this entire community flooded.

So I guess my statement, Madam President, is: We can't afford--we should not allow the impact of an entire year's--now almost 2 years'-- worth of natural disasters go unaddressed for fellow Americans.

I mentioned it is over a year since Hurricane Laura wreaked havoc on Lake Charles. We are only a couple weeks shy of the 1-year anniversary of Hurricane Delta, a category 2 storm that followed on almost the exact same track to hit Southwest Louisiana. Those who were trying to recover were once again subjected to tremendous rains with flooding, and then Hurricane Ida.

But before I go to Ida, let me also point out there were also unprecedented winter storms which unleashed catastrophic damage to livestock, crops, and buildings for Louisiana farmers. The same storms that got more publicity in Texas hit us as well, and then Ida and Tropical Storm Nicholas.

In light of these storms, I must speak about the National Flood Insurance Program, or NFIP, which is set to roll out Risk Rating 2.0 on October 1, while many policyholders are still recovering from hurricane damage.

FEMA said Risk Rating 2.0--FEMA said policyholders were supposed to be able to get the information of what their new premiums would be by August 1. FEMA missed that deadline. They only recently made the information available, less than 1 month of advanced notice.

But despite the lack of transparency, we know Risk Rating 2.0 will increase costs. In Louisiana, 80 percent of policyholders will see increases in the first year. For some, premiums may become unaffordable and could collapse the value of their home.

Now, these aren't rich people. The criticism of the program is that some rich person with a home on the beach gets subsidized flood insurance. That is not true.

These are middle-income families and working families, whom the President, by the way, pledged not to increase the cost on those earning less than 400,000 a year. These folks don't make $400,000 a year; they make far less. They have a hard time paying their gasoline bill or their food bill, with the inflation we have had recently, and now they are about to be socked with Risk Rating 2.0.

By the way, Congress never passed a bill requiring that FEMA implement this. President Biden can stop it. He alone is responsible. He should ask FEMA to delay implementation of Risk Rating 2.0 or reconsider altogether. At the end of the day, flood insurance must be affordable for the homeowner, accessible for the homeowner, accountable to the taxpayer, and sustainable.

I proposed with Senator Menendez--and before Senator Menendez, Senator Gillibrand--reforms to accomplish that. We can achieve that, but Risk Rating 2.0 is not the way to do so. It is time for Congress to conduct thorough oversight.

And, of course, I represent the people of Louisiana, but I could speak of any place in the Nation which has flooded. Speaking for the people of Louisiana, but for all those fellow Americans who flooded, when you flood, you have been pounded; and my job is to help my fellow Americans, no matter where she or he lives, to get back on their feet.

And right now I speak to the people of Louisiana: It is my commitment to you to attempt to do so.

And we are strong. We are resilient. I drove through south Louisiana. There were people cleaning up their house by taking water-logged beds out, but they gave a thumbs-up when you went by. They are resilient. We are resilient people.

On the other hand, when you see on a map of power outage and we are 4 weeks out and there are still people who don't have power back, and this is the United States of America? They don't have homes--they don't have electricity to their home. They can't run their refrigerator. Their home is probably destroyed. It is a tough situation.

So I ask my colleagues to pass a clean, separate disaster assistance bill. The formal request from the White House includes 2.3 billion for the Community Development Block Disaster Recovery Program; 275 million for the Emergency Watershed Protection Program, 9 billion for the Wildlife and Hurricane Indemnity Program, 100 million for reclamation projects to address western drought, and 2.6 billion for the Federal Highway Emergency Relief.

This request includes initial, though informal, estimates of what may also be needed from damage inflicted by Hurricane Ida. Specifically, they expect the cost and needs stemming from Ida to likely exceed an additional $10 billion in the form of CDBG Disaster Relief, Federal Highway Emergency Relief, Federal Transit Emergency Relief, Small Business Administration disaster loans, and the Disaster Relief Fund, among other programs.

And, of course, this is not just to benefit our fellow Americans in Louisiana but also those in the Northeast. More people died in the Northeast related to Hurricane Ida than died in Louisiana. So this is not just for my State; it is for our country--different regions, different neighborhoods, but all fellow Americans.

So I ask that we pass this bill for the people of Lake Charles, pass this bill for the people of Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes in Southeast Louisiana, pass the bill for the people impacted by Ida in the Northeast, and pass the bill for the people impacted by wildfires in the West.

It is really simple. Let's not let politics hold up a supplemental disaster relief bill. Or put differently, let's don't leverage the pain of our fellow Americans in a political game. Pass the disaster relief bill.

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Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, the Democratic Party's reckless $3.5 trillion tax-and-spend reconciliation--their spending spree--will be a disaster for the American family.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget warns that this spree could increase the deficit not by $3.5 trillion but by $5 trillion--a little bit of a bait and switch. Oh, it is only 3.5--only 3.5. It turns out the independent Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says, no, more like 5.5.

Now, today, my colleagues have shed light on the many costs of this economic--I don't know what to call it--potential catastrophe. Here are just a few in speaking from the perspective of my State.

If our goal is to get back to the prepandemic economy, which, by the way, was the best economy of my lifetime--an economy in which there was record-low unemployment, which is to say record-high employment for women, African Americans, Hispanics, the disabled, high school dropouts; record-high employment for veterans, you name it--then this is not the way to go.

By the way, the wage growth in this prepandemic economy was disproportionately for those in the lower quintile of our Nation's economy. So those who were lower waged to begin with were seeing the greater growth in their wages under the previous economy.

Why does this matter a lot for my State? Louisiana is a hub of innovation for energy and other technologies. Innovation creates jobs, raises wages, and puts food on the tables of working families in my State. Congress should encourage that. These are not the Ph.D.s in solar energy; these are the people who produce the oil and gas or use that oil and gas to make the plastics that matter so much to a modern economy.

By the way, you can't help but notice the hike in the price of gasoline that has just occurred, and now they are using the term ``energy poverty'' because there is a hike in the price of electricity. This is hitting the families as a hidden tax.

But this bill squashes that innovation, and it is the new taxes and the increased taxes as to how the spending spree is financed.

As once said, ``The power to tax is the power to destroy,'' but these taxes are destroying the jobs and wage increases that have been so important to these working families over the last 4 years.

The rhetoric, of course, is that this is about a few tax hikes on the wealthiest of Americans, but what we have learned from the Joint Committee on Taxation is that two-thirds of these tax increases will fall upon lower and middle-income families.

As one example, again, House Democrats propose hiking the corporate tax rate to an uncompetitive 26.5 percent. The wealthy will still be wealthy. Studies show that when you raise corporate tax rates, it translates into lower wages for the employees and lower dividends and stock escalation for the shareholders. OK. So that is the employee, the operator in the refinery who shows up to make sure that it runs safely, who goes home and helps pay the rent or pay off his mortgage, and it hurts the retiree, who is hoping that her stock portfolio will allow her to live a better life when she retires.

It is billed as a hike to the corporations, those greedy corporations, but that hike is felt by the workers and the retirees. So when a family begins to figure out how to pay their higher electricity bill, how to pay their increased cost of gasoline with the inflation that has been eating up their budget--they have to pay more for food, and their children are going back to school, we hope, so they are buying those supplies--they will not get the wage increase they had previously hoped for. This hurts the entrepreneur who is trying to start a small business, and by starting that small business, he employs other people. Rolling back the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, raising taxes on working families, will not help them.

President Biden has proposed nearly doubling the capital gains tax, raising it to 39.5 percent. Again, who does that hurt? It hurts, again, the retirees who have been saving for their entire lives so that they can have good lives when they retire.

The Democrats are really earning the title of the ``tax-and-spend party'' with this monstrosity. These taxes will stunt our economy, and the needless trillions in spending will skyrocket already increasing inflation, further impacting working American families.

Mark my words: This will be President Biden's economic Afghanistan.

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