Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2007

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2007 -- (Senate - July 13, 2006)

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, today, I rise to offer this amendment to restore more than $300 million in funding to the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster relief account. This is the amount that the President had requested in his budget. So this is hardly an outlandish fee or a fee that came up out of our heads.

As we all know too well, our country has been visited by disaster far too many times in the last year. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, devastating wildfires in Texas, Arizona, and California, and now the recent flooding in the Northeast, devastating New York as well as Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Vermont, Maryland, and Virginia. Some of my staff people, and I know many others, have had flooding in their homes in the Washington area because of that.

Unfortunately, FEMA has come up short every time. The Agency always seems to be on its heels when it needs to be on its toes.

With all of the trouble that FEMA has, we should not be cutting the funding that goes directly to the people who are victims of these terrible disasters.

We have seen the disaster. We have seen the terrible flooding. We know it is all too real. A week ago Friday, Senator Clinton and I toured the affected regions in upstate New York and saw the enormity of the flood and the work it is going to take to get it clean.

I will share this with you. We met a businessperson who started out a new business and lived in the Catskill Mountains. He had been flooded twice in previous years. The disaster relief official on the ground said the first two floods were 100-year floods, meaning that level of flood only occurred once every hundred years. This was a 500-year flood. This businessperson--dedicated like all small business people, but they are sweating through all of this--was already loaned up and needed more money quickly.

We met another business leader in St. Johnsville in the Mohawk Valley in Montgomery County, who started a new business and was the hope of the county, with 100 new jobs. They had announced they were going to have another 65 new jobs, but they were flooded out.

The Beechnut plant, the largest employer, suffered huge damage, and the plant that makes baby food is not able to open. We visited the Canajoharie town hall, where all of the equipment was flooded and gone, including computers, phones, police department and fire department records--gone.

We were in Binghamton and Conklin, which was totally flooded, as was Hancock and other places. We were told in one area in the Delaware Valley that the rain cloud stayed and never moved for 16 hours at the top of the mountain and the rain kept coming down.

We met an older gentlemen whose 15-year-old daughter was in their house by the creek bank. The creek turned its course and pushed the house into the water, and she died. We saw that damage firsthand.

The damages are going to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Just alone, the sewage plant in Binghamton was destroyed, a brandnew $20 million plant, gone.

The physical damage to farms is enormous. As we flew over the Catskill Mountains, in the Delaware Valley and the Mohawk Valley, you could see farms flooded--the whole farm. The corn was gone. We saw dead cows, which is the life blood of these farms, including the dairy. Crop losses are estimated to be $20 million.

So the damage was enormous. The damage was everywhere. It is unlike anything we have ever seen in New York.

Our amendment is very simple. It restores more than $300 million in funding for FEMA's disaster relief account, bringing it back up to the President's request of $1.9 billion. Under this program, FEMA gives three types of assistance desperately needed: Individual assistance goes to individuals and households. This helps disaster victims find temporary housing, pay for rent, home repair, and even home replacement costs.

In these three areas, the Susquehana Valley, Delaware Valley and its tributaries, and the Mohawk Valley, there are still homes being condemned as we speak. The people who lived in those homes for decades or for generations will never be able to go back. This assistance is so important to them.

Second is public assistance, which is aid to public entities for reimbursement for emergency services and the repair or replacement of disaster-damaged public facilities such as roads, bridges, and water facilities. One town supervisor told us that their whole budget for roads--the whole yearly budget--was gone in 3 days. They don't know how they are going to repair the roads that are still broken and damaged.

It didn't just occur to smaller roads. I-88, one of the most important lanes of commerce in our State, running from Albany to Binghamton, had a huge chasm in it. That was on the front page of most newspapers. Some truck drivers died as they fell into that chasm. We need that to help our towns, villages, and counties, get back.

Third, there is hazard mitigation assistance which helps local governments protect against future disasters and reduce future losses to public and private property. In this era of changing climate, when we have had disasters afflicting us year after year, hazard mitigation assistance is very important.

In our State, as in our neighboring States, people are struggling. There is nothing like seeing that damage firsthand and looking into the eyes of people who have lost loved ones or homes or businesses. You see that the only hope they have is that the Federal Government will come forward.

We know that FEMA didn't do the job in New Orleans. We know it is going to be difficult for FEMA to get the money quickly and in large amounts to the areas in our State where they are needed. But the one thing we also know is that FEMA should not be able to say they don't have the dollars. Right now, with the cuts that are proposed in this budget, we cannot be sure of that.

So many people are struggling in New York and around the country and we should be mobilizing the full resources and wherewithal of the Federal Government, not cutting back. This is one area where there is virtually universal agreement that it is the Federal Government's responsibility--disaster relief.

Today, it is raining again in upstate New York. People are worried about the flood waters rising once again. We have to do everything in our power to help them and give them the assistance they need to rebuild stronger than ever.

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, this amendment is one which I believe would be supported by George Bush because it restores the amount of funding for FEMA by $300 million. That is what the President requested.

We have had unprecedented disasters in the Northeast and in so many other places in other parts of the country as well. We have had disaster after disaster in this country. FEMA should not be underfunded. We should not have the people who have been wiped out by floods and drought and hurricanes sitting on tenterhooks in the hopes that maybe we will pass a supplemental 6 or 8 months from now.

This simply restores the President's request for FEMA. It would hardly be a profligate request. So I ask my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, particularly those from the Northeast, to support this amendment.

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