Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Hurricane Recovery, 2006

EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT FOR DEFENSE, THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR, AND HURRICANE RECOVERY, 2006 -- (House of Representatives - March 15, 2006)

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Mr. BRADY of Texas. Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Chairman, I appreciate Chairman Lewis and the hard-working members of the Appropriations Committee who are doing a difficult job trying to balance the needs of our war on terror as well as disaster recovery in the gulf coast.

This amendment seeks to do a simple thing, to require that the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development use the most accurate and timely data for making decisions on where the unmet needs are in the gulf coast for housing. What this says in effect is that the director shall apply the most timely and accurate data available relating to all damages from such hurricanes and the total number of relocated evacuees. In other words, rather than use the FEMA numbers, which are slow, often inaccurate and, in fact, do not track the evacuees from Katrina to other States, nor because Hurricane Rita occurred after Hurricane Katrina, many of the needs in Texas are still being applied for and have not yet registered. So, without this amendment, the HUD Secretary would be making important decisions on housing and repair and renovation without having a true, accurate picture of where the needs truly are.

I know that in Texas we have more than 75,000 homes that have been destroyed or damaged in Hurricane Rita, much of which are not yet in the system. The last decision that the HUD Secretary made, 98 percent of the money went to Louisiana and Mississippi, 1 percent to Texas. Yet Hurricane Rita actually landed a higher wind speed than Hurricane Katrina, wiped out much of East Texas, did billions of dollars of damage, and yet our people are still waiting for help in housing, repair and renovation. So this is simply an amendment to require accurate and timely data and should this not be allowed today.

I hope perhaps we can work with you, because I think we all want the Secretary to use the best picture of these very complicated hurricane issues.

Madam Chairman, I yield back my time.

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Mr. BRADY of Texas. Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The purpose of this amendment is to request $2 billion for Texas to help specifically 400,000 of the Hurricane Katrina evacuees who are in our communities, to assist the educational costs of the nearly 40,000 students who we are educating today, and in addition to Hurricane Katrina, help pay for the increased public safety and law enforcement costs that have emerged since being host to our Katrina neighbors.

For health care and mental health: $126 million. Services that have not been compensated again for their help.

For critical infrastructure repairs: $408 million. Because most of the Nation does not know that Hurricane Rita caused tremendous devastation, landed, as I have said before, at a higher wind speed than Hurricane Katrina, created more damage to the electrical grid than Hurricane Katrina, did more damage to the refinery capacity than Katrina, and did almost $1 billion of damage to our timber industry, which is our number one industry in most of the 22 counties directly affected by Rita.

This request, headed by our Governor, Rick Perry, of Texas, made on behalf of the entire Texas congressional delegation, also asks for $54 million for transportation, repair of our roads and bridges from Hurricane Rita, $59 million for navigation waterway repairs. That is because Hurricane Rita caused a damage to our waterways that will require dredging and a great deal of repair.

For our agriculture forestry and rural disaster assistance, $170 million, because much of Texas that opened their hearts to Katrina are the rural communities that abut Louisiana. They were the ones who opened their shelters for the Katrina victims, opened them a second time for the evacuation of the Houston and gulf coast area, and then on the third big hit actually Hurricane Rita devastated their communities. These are small rural communities and should be commended for all that they have done. This $170 million helps them recover and rebuild their agriculture economy.

For social services, $125 million, mainly for the folks from Katrina but also for some of our dislocated Rita folks.

And then $186 million for community redevelopment, because our recovery is complicated by our Katrina guests. As you know, we have moved them out of hotels into the available housing units; and because Texas had over 75,000 homes damaged or destroyed by Rita, we both no longer have houses for our own families and no housing for the work recovery crews to allow us to get back on our feet.

This also requests $400 million to help pay for our schools who are educating our Katrina neighbors.

Again, we are thrilled to have them. We know if the situation were reversed their hearts and homes would be open to us, but we also know that should that occur that there would be a heavy burden on those other States. We want to make sure that our communities, many of them small, many of them without big budgets, who have done exactly the right thing, exactly the right thing with Katrina and are struggling to recover from their own hurricane, to make sure they are not left behind.

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Mr. BRADY of Texas. Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

While I recognize the difficulty in making in order these amendments because of the way the bill has been written, and rightly so, the purpose of this amendment is to recognize that we ought not stick our schools with the bill for educating our Katrina students.

Again, we have 47 States that are now educating students who fled Hurricane Katrina. Our State, our communities are educating almost 40,000 of them. These schools were the first ones to open their doors both as shelters, and then to try to provide some normalcy for these families who had nothing to go back to. The schools and the teachers, if you could have been there in Texas or in the other States to see what these schools did to embrace these families, you would know the importance that education has played in bringing some structure to these families from Louisiana and Mississippi.

Unfortunately, in our earlier funding, while we recognized the need to reimburse these schools, the number of students, almost 158,000 of them, this body was not able to provide the minimum funding for them. It looks like for this school year, we will come in somewhere less than $4,000, around $4,000, yet the minimal expense is $6,000 as authorized by Congress.

What this amendment does is, basically it does not cut money from any area, but simply reserves $400 million from Community Development Block Grant, it reserves that in abeyance until $400 million is provided to all the States that are housing our Katrina students.

I will tell you again, every State has done a remarkable job. I am very proud of Texas, very proud of southeast Texas and east Texas and these schools and what they have done. I just think it is wrong when they have very little money as it is to require them to perhaps raise taxes or take money from other vital programs in order to do the right thing for our Louisiana and Mississippi neighbors. We ought not treat schools and communities, I think, with such disdain.

This amendment is designed to raise the profile of our schools, to say thank you for the work that you are doing, and to attempt to provide some minimal reimbursement across the country for these schools for the work they are doing for our Katrina students.

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