Gulf Coast Disaster Recovery Caucus
GULF COAST DISASTER RECOVERY CAUCUS -- (House of Representatives - March 14, 2006)
Mr. MELANCON. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight. With the recent events that have occurred over the past seven, eight months, since Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma have hit the gulf coast of the United States, in the recent week, a group of us got together, and we have set up the Gulf Coast Disaster Recovery Caucus to basically try to make sure that this Congress and America and this administration do not forget the disaster and the catastrophe that has occurred and inundated people all along the gulf coast.
It is not just a New Orleans thing. It is Louisiana, across the entire breadth of the State. It is Mississippi, across the entire coastal area. It is Alabama, it is Texas and it is Florida, on the west coast this time.
I look at the news articles and such. I have had some concerns with some of the statements that have been made in the past about being below sea level, the honesty and the integrity of elected officials in Louisiana. It really bothers me because I do not see the moneys, the $85 or $87 billion that have been attested to be sent to the gulf coast in the hands of the people that need it, in the hands of the victims. There has been billions of dollars that have gone around that are somewhere between Washington, D.C., and the gulf coast of the United States, and I can tell you, it has not gotten to the people that are in need.
If you look at some of the instances of what is going on, parish governments that want to retain their own contractors cannot get what the cost of the Corps of Engineers and FEMA are paying to their contractors, and it is believed on best information that that price may be double to triple what is being paid by the local contractor, by the local government who is doing the job faster, better, and apparently, we believe, if we can ever get the numbers, more efficiently.
$4.2 billion has just been approved to gravel a 172-acre parking lot for mobile homes in Hope, Arkansas. Now, that goes on top of the $25,000 a month paid to the city of Hope, Arkansas, and I am glad for the city of Hope, Arkansas, because if it is like rural American towns, it needs every dime of income it can use to sustain itself. But we have got over 11,000 trailers that are stationed there, 450 miles to the closest disaster parish or county, and there is 11,000 trailers up there that FEMA tells us they cannot put in a flood zone.
Well, the hurricane does not hit in the mountains. The hurricane does not hit in the desert. The hurricane hits along the coastal areas of this United States, and that is what these hurricanes have done.
They put up this morgue, a temporary morgue, FEMA did, in Coralville, Louisiana, $17 million, and now it is abandoned. $5.2 million, this was really nice, was spent getting a contract to a contractor that did not exist, and if it would not have been for the Justice Department seeing that these folks were cashing checks for $10,000 at a time, that they bought a brand new mobile home and three brand new automobiles, then we would still probably be out about $5.2 million. Then when they started to doing the work, it had to be turned over to the fire department and another contractor to get the job done.
Congressman Pickering told me today, and I think I recall it is either 90 or 95 percent of all the moneys are being contracted for debris removal and cleanup in Mississippi is going to contractors from outside the State. I can tell you, I get calls daily in my offices from people that are local that have been trying to get jobs, and then those that seem to be able to get some work, which is the bottom tier, are waiting months for their money.
I have one contractor that has been waiting for $50 million because the FEMA people or the State advanced the parish in which they are working some moneys right after the storm, about $30 million. This contractor is not getting his money, and in good faith, he has been working since day one, and has not gotten his money to pay his people and to run his company because the State and FEMA say that the parish that he is working in has not accounted for every dime.
And yet they have assured, the State and the contractor can document that he has not received a nickel from the parish, yet he is held up. There is another contractor across the river in Plaquemines Parish; they are to the tune of $6 million waiting. I have a guy in my hometown that is a very small company, he is waiting on about $150,000. And let me tell you, for a little, small independent guy like that, that is crushing him. That is killing him.
After the Florida hurricanes, three of them a year and a half ago, under section 32, the Department of Agriculture invoked section 32 of Ag Stabilization Act of 1935 and allowed the Secretary at his discretion to start reimbursing and helping those farmers that were in the category covered by section 32 to give them disaster assistance and get them back working.
On October 28, the Department of Agriculture finally invoked section 32. That is 2 months afterward. And to this day, the $250 million that they allowed, out of 780 in the account that has been appropriated for this year, zero has hit the ground in any one of the States that was impacted by any of these hurricanes. No disbursement whatsoever.
The caucus was set up in hopes of doing several things. One is making sure that the people that lived and worked and want to return to their homes will have that opportunity; to make sure that we provide and that this government provides for the safety of these people, protecting their communities, so they can rebuild their families, their homes and their businesses and trying to provide housing and rebuilding and repairing those houses so people can return home.
We need to get the economy back up. We need to create jobs and rejuvenate the entire coastal region, from Galveston Bay to Mobile Bay and all around down in the Tampa area where Wilma hit.
Health care is nonexistent for those that need it in the Orleans area. If you have a broken arm and you need surgery, you better get to another city. If you have cancer, you better get to another city. If you have anything that requires long-term health care, you better get to another city, because health care is in jeopardy in south Louisiana.
The doctors are like any other businessmen, they have to make a living. They cannot make a living if the customers or the clients or the patients, however you want to refer to them, are not back. And the hospitals can't keep themselves running when people are coming to them with injuries with no hospitalization coverage and they are required to take these people into the hospital to take care of them. And then, of course, when they are hurt, to give them a bed, which becomes a free bed. And you have hospitals that have used every dollar of their reserves and are getting ready to fold up and go under.
Education: families won't bring their kids back unless there are schools to attend. We have tried and we are trying. In Chalmette, they have the school system back up very quickly. Of an 8,000 student population, there was 800 the first day. They are hopeful the folks will come back. But one school has pre-K through high school, and they are working with what little they have.
We need to make sure that we respond to the Americans that have been injured, that we do everything in our power. If we can rebuild infrastructure in Iraq, schools, mosques, public buildings, private facilities, spend $100 million on a marsh area to bring it back to life, then surely we can spend some of our money and these taxpayers' money to help them get back on their feet.
The people in my district, the people of the gulf coast are not looking for a handout. They are just looking for a helping hand, and this government owes those folks that.
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Mr. MELANCON. Thank you, Congresswoman Lee. I want to try, and of course we are getting towards the end of the hour, and Congressman Jefferson and I were hoping to have a few minutes.
I want to thank leadership for their assistance in trying to provide us with time so that we can make the issues known to the Members of Congress that are going to be voting on these issues.
This is not just a Louisiana thing. This is not just a New Orleans thing. This is an issue for the entire gulf coast. These are Americans, good tax paying citizens who have been left, not because they didn't buy the insurance that they were told to buy by their local government, by their insurance agent, by FEMA itself, the mortgage lenders. They bought those things. They did, they paid their taxes. They cared for their homes and now they are totally gone, with insurance companies saying no coverage, that is flood, and many of those houses being outside of flood zone.
Mr. Jefferson can attest to a lot of those issues being from New Orleans and my having Chalmette and South Plaquemines Parish. I would like to yield a little time to Mr. Jefferson.
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Mr. MELANCON. Let me see if Congressman Jefferson and I can wrap it up. If you use the cost-ratio method that the Corps of Engineers used for projects, and what many Federal and State agencies use to determine whether there is value in investments into areas, the resources and the area that was destroyed, and this is just Louisiana, I am not talking about Mississippi and Texas and Alabama now.
Thirty percent of the United States's energy comes from Louisiana offshore oil fields, straight through the state of Louisiana. 30 percent of the United States seafood comes through Louisiana. 42 percent of every commodity that is exported from this country goes through the Port of New Orleans. And that does not count the other three or four ports that are located on that river.
This city, this region, this southern port of our country is an important part that needs to be revived, needs to be helped back along. We can put money into projects, as I said, rebuilding other countries when they are having problems. We have got to be able to do this for ourselves.
There are a lot of folks that wrap themselves in the American flag and their politics, they are patriots, I am a patriot. There are a lot of people that espouse religion in their politics. And I say to those folks, what would Jesus do?
I do not think that he would leave these people wanting. This is not black, this is not white, this is not rich, this is not poor, this is not Republican, nor is it Democrat, it is about Americans that have been hurt and need the help of the citizenry, their fellow citizens to get back on their feet.
There are people returning to their communities and starting to do the planning in spite of the fact that they cannot get answers to the questions of how high, and when, and is anybody going to do anything at all?
There is resiliency in the people of the gulf coast. They are going to come back one way or another. It is going to be a tough bill. It is going to take time. It would take time whether the Government helped or not. But it sure would make it a whole lot better in my mind for other countries in the world to say Americans help each other.
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Mr. MELANCON. Madam Speaker, in closing, the days immediately following the storm in Katrina, before Rita even came and devastated southwest Louisiana and eastern Texas, the only way I can get to Chalmette and St. Bernard Parish was by boat on the river. And when I got there, I met the sheriff.
And they were organizing people they were lifting off the roofs at the port facility referred to as the Chalmette Slip. And all of these people, they had lined up about 200 people putting life jackets on them, putting them on a barge to bring them across the rivers to what is known as Algiers Point in hopes that there would be buses there could take them to a good place, because nobody really knew whether the buses would come and where they would ultimately end up.
But we gave them two MREs and we put them on the barge and we sent them out to Algiers Point, one we said for supper tonight with a bottle of water, one for breakfast in the morning with a bottle of water and let's just hope that the buses will get there.
And as the sheriff and I said goodbye to these folks, the first guy that was in line looked at the sheriff and looked, and he said, Sheriff, you know me, told him his name. He says you know my brother, Joe. You know where we live. Joe drowned. Do not forget him.
The next person in line was a lady who just burst into tears and hugged the sheriff and she was excited. She thought she was going somewhere. I do not where that lady is today. She may be in a hotel somewhere waiting to see when she can get back home.
The third person, this guy was standing there with a plastic grocery bag in his hand. And the sheriff said, I see you have got your lunch already. And he told the sheriff, this is not my lunch, this is all I have left now. My house went under 20 feet of water, at least that is about how high my roof is.
There are people that have suffered tremendously. We talked about the voting rights. I think there is enough safeguards. I believe that if America can spend millions of dollars to help Iraqis vote in this country for transitional government and elect officials in their country, then surely we can safeguard and make sure that Americans, regardless of where they are from, can vote in the elections in the communities of their choice where they reside, where they want to reside, where they want to return to.
In closing, I can only say that what we have done, while it is a good beginning, and every bit that is parceled out to the southern coastal States, we are thankful for. But this is far beyond the capacity of people or individuals to comprehend without physically seeing what is down there.
I do not care if it is Biloxi, Mississippi, New Orleans, Louisiana, Venice, Louisiana, Bayou LaBatrie, Alabama, it does not matter, if you go and you see you will understand.
It is inexplicable to try and describe it. I encourage, as I did with the leadership, when the CODEL came down to Louisiana, every Member of this Congress to go down there. If you make the trip, if you see the areas that were hit, and if you do not feel differently about trying to help these Americans, then there is nothing more that I can do.
I want to thank the leadership for allowing us the time. My job I feel is to keep this issue in front of the American public, because the gulf coast area is not back up on its feet and still needs quite a bit of help. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
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