Katrina Emergency Assistance Act of 2006

KATRINA EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE ACT OF 2006 -- (House of Representatives - March 02, 2006)

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking Chairman Don Young, Ranking Member Jim Oberstar, and, of course, my subcommittee chairman, Bill Shuster, for their leadership in acting together to assure that unemployment benefits are available to the many victims of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita who want to work.

We are acting in virtual unison, though under the wire, to pass S. 1777, the Katrina Emergency Assistance Act of 2006, which extends unemployment assistance under the Stafford Act, providing essential unemployment benefits before they lapse on Saturday. This bill extends the period that victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita would be eligible for unemployment benefits to an additional 13 weeks, for a total of 39 weeks.

Currently, the disaster unemployment assistance benefit period begins the week following the disaster or the date thereafter that the individual becomes unemployed and can extend up to 26 weeks after the declaration or until the individual becomes reemployed. This bill means 39 more desperately needed weeks, in addition to the first 26 weeks. The Department of Labor has the usual authority to administer the program.

The extension of these benefits would help untold thousands of workers who lost their jobs as a direct result of the unprecedented storms that hit the gulf region late last summer but do not qualify for regular unemployment assistance. The Labor Department reports that more than 500,000 individuals have already filed new unemployment claims.

Unemployment at 12.5 percent for those who had returned in November was more than twice the national rate; and for those still displaced the rate was an amazing 27.5 percent, more than twice the rate for those who had returned.

Unemployment benefits are available, of course, only for workers in search of actual employment. These benefits may, nevertheless, of course, be used wherever these workers are living today. However, the benefits also may encourage needed workers to take the many risks associated with returning to gulf cities and towns at a time when all the basic ingredients of working communities, from housing to health care, are at unprecedented low levels.

For example, relatively few workers have returned, despite a high rate of job openings in New Orleans. With at least the guarantee of unemployment benefits during the job hunt and much more rapid and sensible job training and reconstruction policies, these benefits could leverage new work opportunities for gulf residents that were unavailable even before the storm, leave alone what the benefits could do in helping the reconstruction of the region itself.

At the same time, I regret that a provision similar to the one approved by the committee of jurisdiction in the other body to increase unemployment benefits to 50 percent of the national average of unemployment benefits had to be removed from the final bill to achieve the rapid agreement needed. Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana have the lowest unemployment benefits in the country. As a result, disaster unemployment benefits for these States are as low as $87, $90 and $97 per week, respectively.

Fifty percent of the national average for unemployment benefit amounts to $135 a week. In an area of the country that even before Hurricane Katrina suffered long-term unemployment at record levels, this increase could have made a major difference to families who need much more assistance than the typical unemployed worker, because many have lost everything, including their homes.

For the gulf victims, the job search that S. 1777 will afford is much more than finding a job. This bill will help some victims return to the gulf region to begin building their lives from scratch. Many who qualify for these benefits were in the lowest wage categories and are among the neediest for assistance. This extension will help them move forward after experiencing the worst natural disaster in the Nation's history. The American people would want us to take at least the step of passing this urgently needed legislation today.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

I must say, Mr. Speaker, we thought of going forward with this bill under unanimous consent because we did not think there was a single Member of the House of Representatives who would want to deny to people searching for a job after the worst disaster in American history the funds that would enable them to live while they search for a job. So I am amazed. I will be amazed that there is a single vote against the bill.

But I think the chutzpah to stand on the floor and say we are throwing money at a problem, when I have just recounted what these benefits will mean in that part of the country, less than $100 a week for families looking for work, is an amazing statement to make. We are throwing money at a problem? We are giving unemployment benefits to people looking for work who have no other means because Mother Nature has taken their means from them. Moreover, may I remind this House that twice after 9/11 we extended unemployment benefits.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's comments. The kind of small business owners, for example, that the gentleman was talking about, if you are a hot dog vendor, those are some of the most industrious people in society. An example would be people who are willing to work for themselves where they get no benefits of any kind, but work harder than most of us.

I used the hot dog vendor, because that is fairly typical of the kind of person we are talking about.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Speaker, I just want to say that I mentioned 9/11 because I think there is a standard here, a kind of control group. I mentioned that we had had to extend unemployment benefits twice during 9/11. This was a terrorist attack, 3,000 people killed. Thank God, the entire City of New York was not wiped out.

Compare, however, that disaster, as tragic as it was, with wiping out an entire city, the whole city gone, all means of employment gone, now being slowly revived. And I think we will have some appreciation for the American heart.

We knew what to do on 9/11. We will be there for people as long as you need us. And the wonderful thing about unemployment benefits is, they go straight to the person. And, of course, what unemployment benefits do, because the people who get them spend them for necessities in their communities, so what unemployment does at the same time is, of course, to help the community, the economy of the community where the unemployment benefits are being spent.

This is very good money for very desperate people.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

I just want to say, Mr. Chairman, thank you once again for the kind of bipartisan cooperation that I think truly reflects the spirit in which this bill comes to the floor today.

Our country is so well known for disaster relief, generously and spontaneously given to the rest of the world, that the rest of the world actually came forward and offered relief to the United States after Katrina occurred.

In a real sense the standard we have set for ourselves in the rest of the world sets the standard for what we do in our country. Will we be known when this disaster has cleared for the generosity of the response to Katrina?

Despite the sour note of one Member only at the beginning, I want to say that I have seen anything but that in the workings of our committee. It did make it necessary for us to make the case in a way we thought would have been unnecessary. For example, when you talk about throwing money at a problem, it makes me realize that some people do not even understand what unemployment benefits are about. They do not understand that you can only get unemployment benefits if you have had a job so that we are by definition talking about working people. And because many have not been unemployed, they may not understand what you have to go through to keep getting your benefits, to report to the office, to show evidence of having looked for a job.

In other words, we are talking here about people who worked, who have every desire to work, and who need a meager benefit in order to keep looking for work. That is why this bill is minimally reflective of where most Members would be. I think the bill at its base reflects the bipartisan spirit of this House when it comes to extending benefits that would allow people who want to work to, in fact, do that work.

And, indeed, if we should be so fortunate that these benefits may inspire some to go back home to places few of us would want to go because of all the future comforts that are gone, to go back home with meager benefits, with no housing, with insufficient health care, to go back home to help rebuild their community, that is the America that we all know.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased at the way the press has not closed up shop and gone home after Katrina. Story after story continues to tell us what is happening in the gulf region. We have just seen Mardi Gras stories over and over again. I was pleased to see Mardi Gras celebrated in the region.

The region is doing for itself what it can do. As I think about this bill, I think that there are people who are on unemployment benefits who got a job during Mardi Gras and who came back home who no longer need unemployment benefits.

I want us to also remember that New Orleans, in particular, which is known for its Mardi Gras gaiety, this is the oil producing, the energy producing region of our country. We need it to get back on its feet.

This bill will help the region, the whole region, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, to do just that. We are helping the people, and that is the way to help the region.

http://thomas.loc.gov/