Providing for Consideration of Senate Amendment to H.R. 2608, Continuing Appropraitions Act, 2012

Floor Speech

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentlelady for yielding.

This bill is not about the offset. This bill is not about whether we're going to pay for emergency spending. We must and we will. What this bill is about is whether we're going to help 427 residents of Pittsfield, Vermont, who were in the wake of the wrath of Hurricane Irene.

That flood came down and ripped their road to the north and ripped their road to the south, and the water went in the middle, taking out homes and taking out public buildings. That's the selectboard--volunteers. It was that volunteer fire department--volunteers. They didn't have time to have an argument about offsets. They had to find out how they could get an excavator in there, and if they didn't have one, they had to borrow one. They had towns that weren't leveraging some disputes they might have had about whether they would turn back an excavator or earthmoving equipment to help them out. They did it. They had their school running the next day, not because they had a school that was functional--their kids couldn't even get out. They did one thing first, and that was to set up school on the green. They set it up on the green. Two days after this hurricane, the kids were going to school, and their parents were making them feel secure. They couldn't get to a passable road for several days. What did they do? They cut a path through the woods so that, for half a mile, kids could walk and get to transportation.

Now, they're going to have a tab even if we help them, and they know they have to pay for it; but, you know, if your neighbor's house is on fire and if you've got a boundary line dispute, you can use the leverage of his urgent necessity to get that fire hose and hold off and get it on condition that he cave--or you can do the right thing.

Every time this Congress has had an opportunity to come to the aid of your district or mine, we've stepped up. No Vermonter has ever complained to me that we used his tax dollars to help out in Texas, to help out in Ohio, to help out on the gulf coast; and we didn't make it conditional in getting our way--my offset, what might be Afghanistan, and yours might be some environmental program. We knew that was not the time to do it. We are in this together.

This Congress has an obligation to the American people. I have an obligation to the folks in your district, as you do in mine, to do the right thing when an act of God requires for its remedy an act of Congress. Let us act, Mr. Speaker.

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