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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, every month in States all across the country, more and more communities are confronting the awful burden of recovering from a disaster. The process is long. It is expensive. It is confusing, and it is painful.

Some communities are at the very beginning of their recovery, and others, like Lahaina on Maui, are more than a year into the process but still nowhere near back to normal. And they need our help.

It has now been more than 15 months since the ferocious fires leveled Lahaina in August of last year, destroying 2,200 structures--most of them homes--and displacing more than 12,000 people.

For more than a year, survivors and their families have shifted from one temporary housing unit to the next, struggling to find any semblance of stability.

Finding a new job when tourism is still lagging is hard. Rebuilding small businesses without access to capital and a robust workforce is hard. Catching up children on lost time in school is hard. Helping loved ones cope with their grief and trauma is hard. And even after enduring months of uncertainty and persistent hardship, survivors have little assurance that the road ahead will be any easier.

They are doing all that they can to get back on their feet for themselves and their families, for their communities. But the simple fact is they cannot do it alone. They need the Federal Government's help.

Thousands of homes need to be rebuilt, yet only a small fraction have begun the process. Small businesses need help rebounding. Critical infrastructure, including water and wastewater facilities, are not fully yet restored. A permanent site for the King Kamehameha III Elementary School is still under deliberation.

The needs are great, and there are many. And as resilient as the people of Lahaina have been thus far, they cannot and should not bear this burden alone.

While a strong Federal response to the fires has helped to complete the cleanup process ahead of schedule, much more help and a different kind of help will be needed in this next phase of recovery. As cleanup gives way to rebuilding, survivors will need significant financial assistance over a period of months and years. Building a home, building a store, building a community takes time and it takes resources.

These things don't magically appear overnight, nor do they happen without enormous Federal investments, which is why it is essential that Congress, as part of any forthcoming disaster aid package, includes flexible, long-term assistance in the form of Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery funding.

Short-term assistance to respond to the immediate aftermath of a horrific disaster is vital. But that isn't enough. It is not enough to clean up the wreckage and say: The rest is on you. The rest is on you.

The Federal Government's responsibility to help survivors does not end when the streets are clear. Walking away halfway through the process, leaving exhausted survivors high and dry, with no one to turn to, is not an acceptable or successful outcome.

Survivors in Lahaina and in more than 20 other States are not asking for a miracle. They are not asking for a handout. All they want to do is return to life as they knew it--to go to work, to drop off their kids at school, to come back to a home of their own--a life of stability, a life of safety, a life of security. And to do that, they need our help.

They need Congress to do the thing that they have always done, which is to show up for survivors and stick up for them for as long as they need help. It is my understanding that the administration will, in the coming days, submit to Congress an updated request of disaster needs.

And I want to be very, very clear. We cannot--we must not--leave town for the holidays next month without passing the long-term relief that survivors across the country need and deserve. This is not optional. We have to get this done.

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