Blizzard of 2016
Floor Speech
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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, before I complete the following closeout here, I want to make a comment this morning. What we have just done is move consideration of the energy bill--the Energy Policy Modernization Act--from today to tomorrow. It is a little bit unusual, but given what we have seen here, not only in Washington, DC, but all around the East Coast with the weather, the blizzard of 2016, it is understandable that we would allow for a period of time for our colleagues to return to the U.S. Senate.
I think it is more than an understatement to say that it has been challenging to travel, challenging to move. I think it is worth noting, however, that the Acting President pro tempore, the Senator from Maine, and myself, the Senator from Alaska--both kind of the bookends of the country, arctic States, if you will; certainly Alaska is, and Maine is right up there--are here braving the elements.
I might also note for a little historical perspective that as we convene this morning, and you look around the Chamber, the Acting President pro tempore is female, our Parliamentarian and all of our clerks are female, our floor managers are female, and all of our pages are female. This was not orchestrated in any way, shape or form. We came in this morning, looked around and thought: something is different this morning--different in a good way, I might add. But something is genuinely different, and I think it is genuinely fabulous. Perhaps it speaks to the hardiness of women who put on their boots and put on their hat and get out and slog through the mess that is out there.
I don't know about you all, but I spent a good portion of my weekend shoveling. I feel stronger today, but I am ready to be back at work where it is a little less rigorous. It has been an interesting weekend with, again, the extent of the blizzard. I have been asked numerous times: Well, this must just be a normal day for you in Alaska. We haven't had the snow that we would like back home. In fact, we got as much snowfall here in the D.C. metropolitan area as Anchorage, my hometown, has had accumulated over the course of this season.
We have been feeling a little left out of the weather events. I was looking at Facebook over the weekend. There is one post out there that I thought was pretty Alaskan. It said: ``Not to be outdone in winter, #Alaska sees East Coast blizzard and raises it with major #earthquake.''
We had a little bit of excitement back home with a 7.1 earthquake. But the good news for us throughout the State is that while it certainly got everyone's attention at 1 o'clock in the morning, it did not cause significant damage. We are thankful for that.
We are also thankful that as we are digging out of the snowstorms here and throughout the East, people are making it through. But our thoughts and our prayers are for those who have suffered as a consequence of this weather-related tragedy in many, many cases.
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