Approving the Renewal of Import Restrictions Contained in the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act of 2003--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, in a few minutes we are going to be voting on a bill that has been put on the floor that would address many of the emergency disaster needs that have come our way this last year.

In my State of South Dakota, it has been a year for the record books. We have had historically cold winters the last couple of winters. We had a historically wet spring and, if you look at the Missouri River basin, unprecedented amounts of runoff, to the point where we had flooding on the Missouri River throughout the entire basin, up and down. My State of South Dakota, of course, was impacted dramatically by that, as were many of the States in the basin, and I think, like a lot of parts of the country this year that have experienced weather-related disasters, there are a lot of people who have been hurt by that. In my State of South Dakota, we have a lot of homeowners in the Pierre and Fort Pierre area and the Dakota Dunes area and the Yankton area. We have had tremendous wet weather in northeastern South Dakota, and there are a lot of people who have been flooded up there.

We have people in these areas of my State who literally have lost everything--their homes. It was not one of those situations where you get an event that comes through, it is gone quickly, and you can go in and clean up and recover. In this case, they were floods that persisted over long periods of time--in this case months. I remember touring some of those areas in my State and in some cases having to go out there literally in a boat to see homes and having to walk into a home in waders because the water in the living room was literally up to my waist.And the water was there literally for weeks. There were a lot of black mold problems, of course, just a tremendous amount of damage.

As I said, in many cases these are people who for various reasons did not have flood insurance, in most cases because they were told they didn't need it, they were not in the flood plain. These were homeowners who, when the Missouri River dams were built, thought, at least, that they were protected by those dams and as a consequence, perhaps, did not purchase flood insurance, with rare exceptions. Of course, in all of these cases too there are homeowners who, if they did not have flood insurance, have in some cases lost everything. I am not talking about just homeowners who have resources and means, I am talking about people--I met with retired schoolteachers who put everything they had into these homes along the Missouri River, and now they have literally lost everything. So I can appreciate how important it is that we do everything we can to respond to this enormous weather-related disaster that has come our way.

I have great sympathy for those other areas of the country that have been impacted this year as well. I know that on the east coast, we had flooding from the hurricane, and we have had tornadoes this summer that have wiped out parts of entire communities.

It has been a very difficult weather year, and as we approach this issue of how to deal with that, I think it is important that we bear in mind--that we do everything possible to address the needs these homeowners have and try to help them rebuild their lives and put things back together.

So as we get into this debate, certainly I recognize the importance of us having a response. I think that one way or the other, Congress will respond, whether it happens today or in the form of some relief that may be coming over from the House of Representatives. But I believe it is important that we do that. It is also important, given the budgetary circumstances in which we find ourselves, that we pay for it. I think there are a couple of amendments we are going to vote on this afternoon that would accomplish just that.

The Senator from Oklahoma has proposed an amendment which many of us have voted for in the past. I think it got 64 votes here in the Senate, both Republicans and Democrats supporting it. It would do away with some of the duplication we have in our Federal Government.

The Government Accountability Office has identified lots of areas of duplication. In fact, I think the Senator from Oklahoma has already gone through some of those, but I have been here on the floor and addressed some of these as well: 56, or thereabouts, programs spread across 10 or so agencies that deal with financial literacy; 82 programs that deal with the issue of teacher training. I think you have to argue that there is plenty of waste and duplication and redundancy in our Federal Government, and we ought to be doing everything we can to eliminate that, particularly if we are looking at prioritizing where we spend our tax dollars.

In a case such as this, we have people across our country who have been hurt by these natural disasters who need our assistance. It strikes me, at least, that if we are serious about priorities--and I think all budgets are about priorities--we ought to be able to find some savings in these programs and agencies that have been identified by the GAO that would enable us to find the funds that are necessary to cover the disaster effort.

So I would come down here and speak in support of the Coburn amendment.

I think the Paul amendment as well seeks to use unobligated balances from USAID, the State Department. Of course, we are getting to the end of the year, and if there are funds that have not been obligated, that have not been used, that strikes me as well as a way in which we can find some resources that would help us prioritize and put them where they are really needed right now; that is, to deal with these impacted communities, these impacted families, these impacted homeowners, and helping them rebuild their lives.

But fundamentally, when you have a $1.3, $1.4 trillion annual deficit and when you are already at $14 trillion in debt and it is growing at the rate it is, when you have a debt-to-GDP which is literally about 1 to 1, about 100 percent--you have to go back to the end of World War II to find a time in our Nation's history when we have seen that kind of debt. These deficits to GDP, debt to GDP, spending to GDP are at historic highs. It strikes me that even for important matters such as disaster relief, we have to be as responsible as we possibly can and make sure we are doing justice to the American taxpayer and not spending money we do not have.

I think the House of Representatives--and what they intend to do is address this through the continuing resolution which will be coming our way sometime next week. Their approach is to put some additional money, supplemental money, into FEMA, into the Corps of Engineers--those agencies that are kind of on the front lines in responding to many of these disasters. I hope we have an opportunity to vote on that legislation. That will be paid for. That will be within the budget. That will not be deficit spending or borrowing from our children and grandchildren, adding more to the debt. So I think it is a responsible and reasonable way to deal with this, and maybe in the end that is where this ends up.

But the debate we are having today is whether we are going to appropriate $6.9 billion, around $7 billion for disaster relief. I don't think we have a full grasp yet of what some of these damages are. The assessments are still coming in. But I think it is important that we be responsible in how we distribute disaster relief, that we know as much as possible about the full scale and the dimensions of the problem and what those damages are and then, secondly, that we do everything we can to find areas in the budget in which we can offset that disaster relief.

So I hope we can support the amendments that are before us today. As I said before, the Coburn amendment is not something new to the Senate. The Coburn amendment is an amendment many of us have supported in the past. Sixty-four Senators--that is a very large bipartisan majority here in the Senate--have supported this amendment to do away with these duplicative programs and to try to gain some efficiency and some savings in our Federal Government.

It strikes me, at least, that when we are dealing with an issue as important as disaster relief is to so many Americans, we certainly ought to be able to prioritize and take some of those duplicative programs and some of those redundant programs we have in the Federal Government that have been identified by the Government Accountability Office--ask the OMB to identify $7 billion in savings in order to offset the costs of what we are doing here with regard to disaster relief.

So I am certainly going to support these amendments--and I hope my colleagues will--for a lot of reasons. Again, we need to respond when we have a natural disaster such as this, but we need to do it in a responsible way. And when we are running these massive annual deficits we are running today, we need to do everything we possibly can to see that we are paying the Nation's bills, that we are not adding it to the credit card, not handing the bill to our children and grandchildren, not spending money we do not have, but doing everything we can to live within our means. It is the responsible way to go about this. In my view, it is a reasonable way to go about this. I think it is the right way to deal with the Nation's business; that is, to pay your bills. The Coburn amendment does that. His amendment, I guess of the two, specifically directs the $7 billion. I am not sure whether the Paul amendment has a specific score on it. But either would be an important, in my view, message to the American people that we are serious about getting our fiscal house in order. So I hope we will have both Republicans and Democrats here in the Senate that would support both of those amendments.

I yield the floor.

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