Federal Emergency Management Agency Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for yielding me this time.

And I say to my colleague from North Carolina, my friend, whom I've served together with on the Appropriations Committee and subcommittees for a number of years, I say to him, where is the bill for the Secret Service?

Stay tuned.

Where's the bill for ICE?

Stay tuned.

Where's the bill for Border Patrol?

Stay tuned and be ready to talk about those when they come up shortly.

Now, I rise in support of this bill, which will help ensure that our government can help prepare for emergency situations. As we well know, you can never be too prepared.

Over the past year, we've seen the damage natural disasters can wreak. From Hurricane Sandy in the Northeast, to the tornados in the Midwest, to the raging wildfires out West, no area is immune to Mother Nature's wrath.

And now, with a tropical storm brewing in the Gulf of Mexico, we are reminded, once again, that disaster can strike when you least expect it to, or when you can least stand it, though we hope that's not the case with Karen.

This bill will provide immediate funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency at the current annual funding rate of $10.2 billion. As with the previous five short-term funding bills this House has passed in the last 2 days, this will last until December 15, but could end sooner if we can find a way to fund the entire Federal Government before that time.

And as with the previous five short-term funding bills, this language, for all intents and purposes, mirrors that of the clean CR that I offered several weeks ago.

Passing this bill today is important to fulfill our duty to the people of this country that their government should help communities prepare for disasters and be there in their times of greatest need.

However, our end goal isn't to fund each government program bit by bit; it's to reopen the whole Federal Government as soon as possible. I believe this bill inches us closer to that goal, but there's obviously much more to be done.

And let me point this out, Mr. Speaker: if this bill is approved today, this will be the sixth clean, short-term funding bill we send to the other side of the Capitol. These bills provide more than $300 billion in annual funding so far, and at the sequester level. That's one-third of the discretionary budget, and it's one-third of the original continuing resolution that we filed in September; one third of the way toward opening the entire Federal Government with clean funding bills.

This is what the Senate says they want. So why aren't they voting on these bills?

In addition to these clean bills, we've also sent over to the Senate seven other appropriations bills to fund portions of the Federal Government. The answer: a loud snore.

This House, since the Republicans took over in 2011, has been serious about trying to return to regular order; but it takes two to tango, Mr. Speaker, and the Senate has passed zero regular appropriations bills this whole year. Zero.

I say we must come together. On Monday night, the House passed another amendment, sent it to the Senate, that would have funded the entire government. And we asked for a conference with the Senate. We even appointed our conferees, the House, sent that to the Senate.

What have we heard from the Senate since that time?

Another loud snore. They will not agree to talk.

It's the time-honored tradition of this Congress, in the United States of America, that when one body disagrees with the other body, which is quite frequent, what happens, we appoint conferees to work out the differences.

The House appointed its conferees. The Senate has refused to appoint conferees. Otherwise, we could sit down and talk and solve this problem and put people back to work in the government and make sense of the mess that we're in. It just takes the Senate agreeing to go to a conference.

What's difficult about that?

That's as simple as pie. It's what we've done since we've been a Nation.

I would urge the other body to appoint conferees. Let's sit down and work out the differences. We've got a table waiting downstairs, or we can meet over there, whatever. We can meet in their conference room or ours. We can sit down, as gentlemen and gentleladies, and work out the differences between the House bill and the Senate bill as we normally do.

We've got to come together, Mr. Speaker, Senate, House, Republican, Democrat, Mugwump. We've got to have a meaningful discussion on how we can fund the entire Federal Government, first, to reopen its doors, then to fund it as it should be funded, with regular order, full-year appropriations bills.

The bill before us continues trying to make sense of the situation we're in, working toward ending the shutdown, and to ensure that from today forward FEMA has the resources it needs to prepare for whatever should come our way.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source